


The Moon and the Sea

by dirigibleplumbing



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcohol dependency, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Artist Steve Rogers, Background Relationships, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Caretaking, Crows, Discussion of Bondage, Gay Tony Stark, Happy Ending, Haunting, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Italian Maria Stark, Italian Tony Stark, Loki - Freeform, Loki's magical bestial offspring, Lucky the pizza dog - Freeform, M/M, Magic, Mentions of homophobia, Not a horror story, Past Bucky Barnes/Natasha Romanov, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Past Tony Stark/Tiberius Stone, Pining, Service Top, Stalking, Supernatural Elements, Switch Tony Stark, Thaumaturgy, Tiberius Stone - Freeform, Tony Stark Hates Magic, Wanda Maximoff - Freeform, Witch Tony Stark, circuses, clint barton - Freeform, he's a practitioner but not of magic, mentions of biphobia, natasha romanov - Freeform, some Dom/sub overtones, switch steve rogers, urban foraging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 04:22:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 81,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16590779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirigibleplumbing/pseuds/dirigibleplumbing
Summary: Steve has lived his whole life in the coastal California town of Nublado. He’s spent the last few years trying to move on from a traumatic event in his past, and he finds new joy when he befriends—and quickly falls for—reclusive local billionaire Tony Stark. Then Tony abruptly breaks things off and won’t reply when Steve reaches out. Steve’s friends Clint and Nat have his back, at least. But… is someone following him everywhere? What’s with the human teeth Steve and his friends found while they were out fishing? How did the Scarlet Witch know so much about him? And why are there so many crows around?





	1. Prologue - The Drowned Man

**Author's Note:**

> This story is in part a fusion with the film Practical Magic, though it really only keeps two major elements and wildly differs in pretty much every other aspect. There is also a sequence which draws from the novel _The Night Circus_ by Erin Morgenstern. No knowledge of either canon is necessary to follow this story. 
> 
> Nublado is a fictional town in Northern California in the fictional Cuarzo County. It is an amalgam of Humboldt County, where I currently live, and Sonoma County, where I have spent a lot of time. 
> 
> Heartfelt and awed thanks to my beta, [dasyatidae](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dasyatidae/pseuds/dasyatidae), who not only helped me edit the longest thing I have ever completed, but also rewatched Practical Magic with me, listened to me talk through my plot dozens of times, helped me brainstorm, and came up with a brilliant solution to a thorny dilemma I'd written myself into. Thanks also to my partner, who also listened to me talk through my plot dozens of times, and came up with an idea for the climax that is now one of my favorite parts of the story. Any remaining plotholes and errors are all my own.
> 
> Thank you also to my wonderful Big Bang partner, [Bella](https://13bella.tumblr.com/) for the gorgeous art. The art is embedded in chapter 3, and also [has its own post here](https://13bella.dreamwidth.org/1278.html).
> 
> I wasn’t entirely sure what fandom to mark this fic as, since it’s a non-powered AU and I pulled elements from a few different Marvel canons. Ultimately I’m going with MCU and ambiguous fandom because I decided that MCU was my biggest influence. You will find, though, that this Tony makes fewer pop culture references and quips than MCU Tony, has blue eyes, and is in recovery for alcohol dependency (albeit informally, unlike 616 Tony, who attends meetings). 
> 
> The flood mentioned throughout, which happened in-story in May 2013, did not happen in reality, and not only because Cuarzo County doesn’t exist. It’s implied that this flood occurred as the result of an earthquake-instigated tsunami, and there wasn’t a big enough earthquake in California for that to happen in 2013. 
> 
> For more detailed warnings with minor spoilers, see the end notes.

Lucky barked, wagging his tail. Steve scooped the ball up, feeling the damp sand clinging to it, then threw it into the breaking waves. Before his fingers even finished releasing, Lucky launched himself after it. 

The last edge of sun disappeared down the horizon, egg yolk yellow over the churning brine of the ocean. Rather than the solid wall of gray that usually filled the sky on the coast of Cuarzo County, there were tufts of smoke-like clouds, taking on tinges of pink and lavender as the sun sank lower. 

Water lapped at his bare feet. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted seagulls and crows flitting over the sand. A few yards away, a vulture picked at something brown and furry that Steve hoped Lucky wouldn’t find. Further off, in the breaker zone of the water, someone was swimming among the rocks. The dark figure moved fluidly around the large, craggy rock for which the spot, Keyhole Beach, was named. On beaches with similar formations, photographers would swarm at sunset, trying to catch a shot of the sun through the round gap in the stone. Keyhole Beach closed to visitors early, though. And from where Steve was standing, the last arc of the sun was nowhere near the specter of the keyhole rock, instead casting gilt shards of light onto the approaching waves. 

Lucky bounded back to him, his battered glow-in-the-dark ball clutched proudly in his jaws. He circled Steve a few times, the bouncing of his tail spraying droplets of water every which way, just as a wave lapped foamy and frigid over Steve’s toes. The wind as it hit his bare, wet ankles was unrelenting, but  his wool sweater was cozy and Lucky’s breath was hot on Steve’s skin as the dog dropped the ball at his feet once more. Steve bent down to take the ball again. The swimming figure in the distance lingered in the corner of his vision. It was rapidly growing dark, and Steve was pretty sure that this stretch of beach had technically closed at least an hour earlier. Steve himself had parked by Serpent Rock, which stayed open an hour after sunset, and then walked out to this cove in hopes of avoiding other people. Presumably this swimmer had a similar idea—though if they had parked near here, they would return from their swim to find the parking lot blocked off at least, their car ticketed or towed at worst. Regardless, it didn’t make a solitary evening swim in the Pacific a wise choice. 

Lucky let out a sharp bark and Steve threw the ball once more. In the gray-blue sky above, the full moon hung round and pale as Lucky’s ball, like it had been tossed into the sky for some celestial dog to pursue. 

That’s when Steve saw the lone swimmer get caught in a rip current. 

He moved without thinking, barreling into the water as fast as he could. Even in the dim light, he could see the water flowing in the distinctive mushroom shape, streaks of mud flowing through the calm patch that was eerily devoid of waves. Soon Steve was up to his waist in the water, and he threw himself bodily into it, preferring the speed of swimming to wading. 

Steve’s limbs cut through the water as he made his way toward the bobbing figure ahead of him. He remembered that, that part of drowning, five years ago when he was pulled under and almost died: the listless floating, the unresponsiveness of his limbs, the feeling of the sea grabbing him and pulling him under, the air disappearing from his lungs, leaving him without breath to shout. The conviction that his life was about to end. 

He couldn’t let this person die.

The water beat against the figure, hit them, turned them. Steve swam through the crushing water, praying he’d get there in time. Finally, they were in reach. Steve grasped onto them, feeling the current tugging now at them both. Even out by the keyhole rock, the water wasn’t very deep. In places, Steve would be able to stand easily, feel the pebbles and sand and seaweed under his feet. But the rip current was like a black hole, pulling, pulling, pulling. 

He angled the pair of them so he was swimming parallel to the beach. The person he dragged behind him was a man, his dark hair a tangled mess plastered to his head. His eyes were still open, but glassy. Steve swam on, hoping he hadn’t been too late. That the man was alive. 

At last they reached the shore. Feeling the air against his soaked clothes, Steve was somehow even colder than when he’d been submerged in the biting water. He didn’t stop, kept walking and dragging the prone figure with him. Some part of him felt, irrationally, that if the ocean could touch them—even just the lapping waves that licked the sand in rhythmic sloshes—it would drag them back out. He stopped when they reached dry sand, collapsing in a heap. 

Steve bent over the man’s listless form and took his wrist in one hand. He had a pulse, thank god. Breathing was a promising start, and meant there was no need for CPR. With hands shaking slightly from the biting chill, Steve opened the man’s slack mouth and was more relieved still to find it unobstructed. Steve rolled him onto his side, and water spilled from the man’s mouth. He coughed and sputtered, until finally it seemed he’d eliminated all the seawater he’d swallowed. He still wasn’t awake, though. 

With a silent curse, Steve realized that he hadn’t thought to empty his pockets or take off any of his clothes before jumping in. His phone would be a wet, useless brick in his pocket. 

“Hey!” Steve yelled. The man didn’t stir. “Wake up!” 

Lucky had approached them, and stood now a yard or so away, looking on with an unwavering gaze. His tail hung between his legs, and he craned his neck low and tense. 

Steve growled in frustration. The man was a little smaller and more leanly built than Steve himself, but carrying him even this far hadn’t exactly been easy. He could definitely make it back to Serpent Rock, and even to his car if necessary, but it wouldn’t be fast, and what if the man couldn’t afford the time that would take? God, why hadn’t Steve thought to take out his phone before he’d jumped in? 

The man coughed softly once more, a shudder racking his narrow frame. Steve pushed the man’s sodden hair off his face. Soft crow’s feet crinkled at the edge of his eyes, the wrinkles of someone who smiled and laughed with their whole face. Precise, dark facial hair accentuated his strong jaw and the planes of his cheekbones, and—

And the man was Tony Stark. Tony Stark, tech genius and local philanthropist. Steve didn’t exactly follow the lives of minor celebrities—or major ones, for that matter—but Stark had spent his teenage years in Cuarzo County and had family ties to the region, so he often featured in local papers. He’d been in the major mainstream news too, recently, and not just the tech magazines. He’d last been sighted in public six months previous, boarding a private jet out of New York, and as far as anyone knew, now lived in his hometown of Nublado. 

No one had caught a glimpse of him in public since he’d arrived. It was only because of the steady stream of cars coming and going from his mansion that anyone knew he was still in town. Everyone Steve knew had a friend of a friend who delivered for a restaurant or specialty grocery store and had made a delivery to the Carbonell mansion, Stark’s childhood home. It wasn’t just businesses that heard from him, either. In the short time since he’d returned to California, Stark had set up free wi-fi in every city center within a hundred miles, replaced all the fire trucks in the county on his own dime, and donated some of the most valuable beachfront real estate in all of California to the national park service. This had done nothing, though, to dispel the rumors about why he’d left New York, or to stop people from mentioning the sudden death of his last boyfriend, Tiberius Stone, every time the subject of Stark was brought up. 

Stark stirred, interrupting Steve’s thoughts. Thank god, he was waking. The water gleamed and dripped off his golden skin. His arms and chest were corded with muscles, the practical, compact kind that Steve preferred on other men—and he should really stop checking the guy out while he was recovering from drowning.

Slowly, his arms shaking from cold or exhaustion or both, Stark pushed himself upright. 

“How are you feeling?” Steve asked. This distance from the shoreline, the sand still clung to some of the sunshine from earlier in the afternoon, and he felt his frigid muscles slowly warm and ease from their panicked state.

Stark looked at him with wide blue eyes. “Uh,” he said. 

“You need medical attention,” Steve said. “Do you think you can stand? I’m parked a ways away, over by Serpent Rock. My, uh, phone is dead, but hopefully we’ll run into someone before then and we can call an ambulance.” 

Stark looked at him blankly for a moment. Then, he shook his head. “My stuff is over there.” He jerked his head to one side. 

“Okay,” Steve said. “I’ll go see if it’s still there. You take it easy, okay?” He got to his feet, his soaked jeans clinging to his legs and restricting his steps. In the shadow of an algae-covered rock, he found a pile of clothes. He bundled them into his arms and returned to Stark. 

He took the clothes gratefully, wrapping a dark wool coat over his shoulders. “Thanks for the save,” he said. “What happened?” 

“You got caught in a rip current,” Steve said. “Do you have a phone? We need to call an ambulance.” 

“It’s fine,” Stark insisted. “My car’s not far. I’ll be fine.” 

“Mr. Stark, I’m not sure that’s—”

“Okay, if you know who I am,” he interrupted, his voice still rough from coughing, “then you know I’m perfectly capable of getting myself private medical attention. And very, very quickly” —he broke off to cough— “I don’t need an ambulance. I don’t want to go to a hospital and have pictures of me looking like a drowned rat on every tech blog this side of Silicon Valley” —he coughed again, a little less severely than before— “next to clickbait about how I’m unstable or tried to throw myself off a cliffside or whatever bullshit they’ll come up with.” He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Okay?” he said, a little quieter. “I really am grateful. But I can handle it myself.” 

Steve wasn’t quite convinced, but the man certainly had the resources to take care of himself. “Okay,” he said grudgingly. 

“Thank you,” Stark said, something in him relaxing. The sky was a dull, dark blue now, and the clouds had congealed into large, heavy shapes that echoed the craggy silhouettes of the rocks that studded the horizon. Even shivering, half-naked, and wrapped in an incongruously fine coat, Stark seemed to fit the scene, as striking and beautiful as the landscape. “I do appreciate it.” 

“Of course,” Steve said. He’d only done what anyone would do. 

Stark got to his feet, only a little unsteadily, shaking his head at the hand Steve offered him. He pulled the coat around himself, hugging himself with his arms. “Give me a call if you need anything,” he said, slipping a hand into a pocket of his coat and pulling out a business card. Steve took it, noticing as he did so the calluses on Stark’s slender fingers, the shape of his slender wrists. “Or maybe I’ll see you around. I don’t leave home much, these days, but I come to this beach for every full moon.” 

“Okay.”

“Really, thank you,” Stark said again, taking a step in the opposite direction of Serpent Rock. “You got a name?” 

“Steve,” he said. “Steve Rogers.” 

“Nice to meet you, Steve.” Stark smiled, a gleaming, glittering thing that lit sparks in his eyes, and, yes, there it was—crinkled the corners of his bright eyes. 

He turned and started to walk off. Steve moved to follow him. “Let me at least see you to your car.” 

“I promise, I’m fine,” Stark insisted. “Thank you, you’ve already gone above and beyond.” 

Steve let him walk away. He watched him go, his hips swaying nearly in time to the gentle cadence of the waves. 

Finally, Steve returned to himself. Reaching down to give Lucky a good scratch behind his ears, he set off in the opposite direction. 


	2. Chapter 1 - Where the Moon Meets the Sea

On the night of the next full moon, Steve returned to Keyhole Beach. He found a boulder with a nice slope to it and sank onto the ground beside it, leaning against the rock like it was a lounge chair. Lucky lay down at his feet. He plucked his phone from his pocket—his new phone, a StarkPhone that Natasha assured him was top of the line. It had been couriered to his apartment the day after he met Tony Stark.

Settling into the sand, he pulled up an ebook and began to read. The horizon paled to a hazy tangerine, delineating the smudgy pastel sky from the choppy darkness of the sea. The keyhole rock stood tall, a single Monterey pine growing towering and windswept from the top. Lucky barked quietly in his sleep, a paw twitching against Steve’s shoe.

In his peripheral vision, Steve could see a figure approaching. Even as his attention mostly stayed on his reading, something prickled in his brain—he should have heard the crunch of footsteps on sand, for how close the person was.

“Nice dog,” said a voice, startlingly close.

Steve looked up, and there he was: Tony Stark. He wore all black, not exactly the usual look for the beach—even one as cold as the Pacific in Northern California. His pants were dark jeans, but his pointed, laced shoes were shining black leather, and the coat draped over his shoulders like a cloak shimmered in the golden light, like the fabric was run through with threads of something precious or metallic. He had a round, wide-brimmed hat on his head. His smile was lopsided.  

“Thanks,” Steve managed to say. “He’s my friend’s. I just borrow him whenever I go to the beach.”

“What brings you out here?”

“I hoped I’d run into you again.”

Stark’s smile broadened. “Here I am.” He crossed his arms—not exactly defensively, but not a welcoming or friendly gesture by any means. “What can I do for you?” he asked, and Steve didn’t think the phrasing was a coincidence.

“It’s a little odd,” Steve admitted. “I’m doing some research. Genealogy type stuff. And I think your grandmother, Elettra Profeta, knew someone from the family I’m looking into. Sylvana Bertolini?”

Stark dropped his arms and smile and raised his eyebrows. “Yes, she did,” he said slowly. For a moment his gaze fixed on the ocean, but it was like he wasn’t really seeing it. He turned back to Steve, looking a little more relaxed than he did before, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders back, his posture just that little bit wider. Even with the lingering sunlight catching the edges of his form, his black clothes and broad hat cast him in a darkness more suited to negative space. “What’s your connection to Sylvana?”

“I knew her granddaughter,” Steve said.

“So you _are_ that Steve Rogers.”

Steve bit his lip. “I…”

“Huge fan,” Tony went on. “I mean, I didn’t know I had such a personal interest in stories about someone who saves drowning victims, but, whaddya know, funny how life works out sometimes.”  

“Thanks,” Steve said after a moment. Nublado was a small town, and though it had been more than five years now, the earthquake and tsunami that followed were still a major part of the county’s consciousness. He could relate to that, he reminded himself—given what he was here for, how often he thought of the ones who he hadn’t saved, who had drowned anyway. He just didn’t care for being seen as some hero by people who met him, when he knew reality was much more complicated.

“Shit, I’m being an ass, aren’t I? I’d love to talk to you about my nonnina. Seriously.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, really. She’s part of why I’m back here. Living in her old house. Bit of a matriarchal thing, kinda. And, also, I really am glad you saved me from drowning, have I mentioned that? Probably should’ve opened with that. Lemme start over.” He adjusted his hat on his head, then looked Steve in the eye and smiled. And god, what a smile. “Hi Steve. I’m Tony. I’m glad I ran into you tonight. Thanks for being such a big damn hero, I’m a fan of not being dead at the bottom of the ocean.”

“Hi,” Steve said, feeling a little breathless. When Tony said it _that_ way, he didn’t mind so much.

“Why don’t you come by my place sometime, I’ll tell you everything I remember about Sylvie and my grandma.”

“I’d really appreciate that.”

“Great. You have my number, text me whenever, we’ll make something work.”

Steve’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s your number?”

Stark laughed, an alluring, tinkling sound, like rain against a windowpane. “Yeah, that’s my number. Whose else would it be?”

“I meant,” Steve said, feeling his cheeks heat, “I didn’t think it would be your personal cell phone. I figured it went to an assistant or something.”

“Really my number,” Stark assured him. He bit his lip, looking Steve up and down, appraising, and Steve tried not to shiver under the attention. “Seriously, text me. Don’t make me get creepy and text you first.”

“I’ll text you,” Steve promised.

“Great,” Stark said, giving Steve another brilliant smile. It was bright and warm and Steve had to resist sucking in a breath, feeling ridiculous. He’d seen handsome men before. Some of them had even smiled at him. Probably. At the moment, he was having trouble thinking of anything other than what he could do to have that look directed at him again. “Now, I’m probably being an asshole again, but I actually come out to a beach that closes early so I can have some alone time out here. Sorry, I know it’s weird, do you mind humoring me and finding another place to be for the rest of the night?”

“Oh,” Steve said, feeling a frown make a crease between his brows. “Sure, no problem.”

“Sorry,” Stark said again.

“It’s fine,” Steve said, getting to his feet. Lucky stirred at his movement, stretching back on his hind legs and then butting his head against Steve’s legs, tail wagging wildly. “I should get Lucky back to Clint soon, anyway.” Steve had taken Clint’s car to the beach, picking it up while Clint was still on shift. Clint would have finished work by now and was probably enjoying a beer at their favorite dive bar, the Twa Corbies. He’d need his car to get home, not to mention his dog.

“See you around,” Stark called as Steve headed back toward Serpent Rock.

Steve picked his way back across the pebbly beach. It was a beautiful night, a trace of the day’s warmth still lingering against the foggy, chilled air that rose from the water.

He glanced back to see Stark still standing at the edge of the water, his hands in his pockets. His shoes looked pristine, like the sand hadn’t touched them. The wind picked up, a huge wave crashed around his feet, and he remained restful as ever. Even his hat didn’t so much as buckle in the wind.

 

_________

 

Steve texted Stark the following morning and received a swift reply. It didn’t take long to arrange a time to meet at Stark’s mansion that evening.

After Steve thought the logistics had been completed, his phone buzzed with another text.

 

 **Tony:** _do you have any allergies?_

 

Steve pondered this, wondering why Stark could possibly be asking. Finally, he wrote,

 

 **Steve:** _not any more_

 **Tony:** _cryptic, I like it_ _  
_ **Tony:** _hope you like cats_

 

This exchange didn’t give him much indication of what to expect of their plans to talk about Elettra Profeta and Sylvana Bertolini. It hadn’t been an easy decision to seek Stark out at the beach again that month, but when he’d learned about the Bertolini’s connection to the Stark family, he figured he may as well try to use his happenstance new connection to Stark to learn more. His interest in the history of Peggy’s family was hard to explain—even Natasha was puzzled by it. All he could say for himself was that it helped him make sense of her life and everything that had happened, to learn about where she’d come from. God knew how he’d manage to explain it to Tony Stark, a guy who appeared on both Buzzfeed lists of the best-looking men in the tech industry and on Democracy Now interviews about the future of green energy and the evils of corporate petroleum.

He struggled to decide what to wear. He tried a button-down, then decided it was too formal. Next he put on his favorite pair of worn jeans but thought they looked too casual. He knew it wasn’t a date, that there wasn’t exactly a dress code for a discussion of genealogy, but. Tony had been so striking on the beach, he just wanted to look nice, too. A part of him that sounded suspiciously like Bucky pointed out that if he spent any time meeting new people or out of his comfort zone, talking to someone about geneology wouldn’t feel like such a big deal.

He ended up in a blue henley and gray slacks. His slip-on canvas shoes were still gritty from the night before. Cool sand rushed over the seams of his toes when he pulled them on.

He’d interviewed people about family history before, he reminded himself. That had all gone smoothly. There was nothing to worry about now. They had all been related to Peggy somehow, though, people her parents had put him in touch with, or even people he’d met before she’d passed. It didn’t feel anything like this.

He drove to the coast with some trepidation. The Carbonell Mansion, which he’d grown up seeing, had until now seemed untouchable, like a scale model behind a plexiglass display in a museum. To contemplate entering it now was overwhelming.

The gray sky clamored with the sounds of the ocean beating against rocks and of wind-ripped rain tearing through trees as Steve pulled Clint’s old hatchback up the long drive. The mansion was set a ways back from the road, its far edge abutting the cliffs that overlooked the ocean. A lot of the fancier houses in this part of town had their own private beaches, scattered here and there between public ones, and Steve had no doubt that the Carbonell Mansion was among them. Seeing the splendor unfold up the drive—red alder weighed with Spanish moss and prickly lichen, wild irises spilling all over massive geraniums and a tumble of wisteria, prickly pears growing beside redwoods and foxglove beside agave—he imagined an ornate spiral staircase cut out of the cliff face leading down to a secluded cove.

The building itself was painted red, now, the same red as the rambler roses that encrusted the outside fence. When he was a kid, it had been a creamy off-white, the color of the overcast sky on a bright day, with all the trim and spindles and balustrades painted to match. As he stepped out of the car, Steve saw that the trim now was gold—a gold so polished and reflective, he thought it might be entirely gold leaf. The unreality of covering the outside of a building with literal gold did nothing to appease his anxiety. He felt grounded only by the constant drizzle of rain; it didn’t rain inside museum displays, after all.

Stark’s seemingly genuine smile when he opened the door, at least, helped to put him at ease. As did Tony’s easy chatter, which bubbled on as he led Steve to, of all places, a converted garage. The brushed concrete floor was laid out with a variety of workbenches, drawers and tool chests. “I think better when my hands are doing something,” Stark explained, bouncing from one bare foot to the other. “This’ll go much better if I have something to work on. And call me Tony, seriously, I can hear you saying _Mr. Stark_ in your brain. I’m pretty sure we’re the same age, okay, it’s weird.”

Steve had been wondering that himself, and had looked this up: Tony was one year older than him. He’d tried not to read too much on Tony’s Wikipedia page, but judging by Tony’s _So you_ are _that Steve Rogers_ , Tony had googled Steve, too, and knew at least the basics of what had happened during the flood five years previous.

 _Something to work on_ turned out to be a motherboard Tony was rebuilding. “So, okay,” he said as he set to it. “My grandma Ellie.”

Elettra, her two sisters, and their parents had moved to Cuarzo from New York in the 1930’s, on the advice of a wise woman. In the span of just two years, her father started a lucrative business designing and manufacturing specialty filmmaking and lighting equipment, made his fortune, and died. Elettra and Sylvana met as children during World War Two and were inseparable from then on. They’d become even closer after Elettra lost her sister, Damiana, to suicide, one night at the San Patricio Bridge.

“That’s the bridge with the Hanged Lady, right?” Steve asked, referring to the local ghost story.

“Yeah,” Tony said. Steve watched him work at the motherboard, fascinated by the sure movement of his hands. “That’s her. My great-aunt Damiana. She was supposed to meet her boyfriend there one night so they could run away together. He didn’t show. Turns out it’s because he died in a factory accident earlier that day. Anyway, she didn’t know that—or who knows, maybe she did and that was the last straw—so she hung herself.”

“My friend and I saw her,” Steve said. Tony looked up from his circuitry, peering at Steve with an arched brow. “Well, we saw a pale woman in a white dress on the edge of the bridge at night and then ran like idiots, because we were 11 years old,” Steve admitted. Bucky had always maintained it had been the ghost herself; Steve had remained more skeptical.

Tony laughed. “Sounds about right.”

When Elettra and Sylvana were 20, Elettra married Bernardo Carbonell, the young heir of a local vintner. Sylvana was furious. “That’s when they started fighting,” Tony explained. “It got intense. It’s like they hadn’t realized how much they cared for each other until they were at each other’s throats. Nonnina saved some of the letters between them from then—I can find them for you, if you want to see them—and it gets hard to read. Whatever was between them, it was tearing Ellie apart. They loved each other, even when they fought.”

“So they were lovers,” Steve said.

Tony looked thoughtful. “I think so,” he said. “I don’t know what you came here expecting to hear, but yeah, I think they were. She’s your friend’s grandmother, right?” At Steve’s nod, he continued. “They don’t come out and say it, or Sylvana didn’t, in the letters I have. Not in terms I understood, anyway. But the way they were fighting, it wasn’t just personal, it was—unresolved. Like they were so furious to have to be mad at each other when they hadn’t managed to express love for each other properly first.

“Then Sylvana got married too, and they found a way to be friends again. Sort of. The letters make it sound like they’re spending time together, but they’re formal with each other, like they aren’t quite sure about it yet. And then my mom was born, and it fell apart again. They made up when Sylvana had her first kid, then fought again when she had her second, and so on. It was like that for a while, until Bernardo died. Somehow that was all Sylvana needed to forgive Ellie forever.”

“So Ellie’s husband died young, too,” Steve observed.

Tony grinned mirthlessly. “You catch on fast.”

“That catches up to what I know, pretty much,” Steve said. “I have some of Elettra's letters to Sylvana, if you’re interested. Filling in the gaps with what you’ve told me, they’re all from after Bernardo’s death.”

Though that had covered most of what Steve had hoped to learn about Sylvana and Elettra’s friendship, the discussion didn’t drop off. Instead, conversation flowed from topic to topic easily. Tony reminisced about his mother, Maria, about her teaching him to play the piano, about visiting the vineyards she owned in the valleys outside of town, about traveling to Tuscany with her on summers he was off from school. Steve shared about being a sickly child, about drawings scrawled in notebooks while sitting in doctors’ waiting rooms, about recovering from illness and coming to love his body and everything it could do. They talked about their disparate experiences as teenagers in Nublado. Steve had attended the local high school, while Tony had started MIT only a few months after moving to town from New York, returning on breaks to spend time with his mother and grandmother. Tony shared stories from college and grad school and being a TA for engineering classes. Steve talked about studying illustration, his love of plants and animals, and his path to becoming a scientific illustrator.

The subject then returned to Tony’s family history. His mother had been married twice before marrying Tony’s father. Both her husbands had been unpopular, rich men, whose deaths were widely considered to have been murders. Although no one suspected that Maria had had a part in either of them—she was such a _pretty_ thing and seemed to be a bit out there, you know, walking on the beach all the time, her head in the clouds, and both her husbands had been so disliked, there were plenty of more interesting suspects—she hadn’t felt as welcome in Nublado after the passing of her second husband. She’d jumped at the chance to marry Howard Stark, a New Yorker who no one from her hometown knew, and move with him to the East Coast.

Steve asked, at one point, how Maria had ended up with two such awful men.

Tony chewed on his lip. “There’s sort of a tradition,” he began, “on my mom’s side of the family, of committing to men we don’t love. Doesn’t ever seem to have quite the result we hope it will,” he added, his mouth forming a self-deprecating twist.

After a couple hours, Tony insisted on ordering takeout.

It was then that Steve was introduced to the three cats who had accompanied them from the house to the garage: Phallas, a tabby Maine Coon who’d been staring at Steve from the top of a tower of flat files; Hygiea, a slender Maltese who showed up to meow at them at the same time as the food; and Nereid, an overweight black cat who was now sitting on Tony’s lap. “Cat person?” Tony asked as Hygiea circled Steve’s ankles. “You seem more like a dog person. I bet you’re a dog person.”

“I like both,” Steve said.

“There aren’t usually this many inside,” Tony went on. “They’re allowed to come and go as they please, but they don’t care much for the rain.”

It was easy to forget, buried in the bright white light of the workshop, but it was undoubtedly still raining outside, as it had been nearly nonstop for weeks. As was usual for this time of year.

“So there’s only this many cats inside every single winter,” Steve said.

“You got me. I’m a crazy cat lady.”

The food arrived quickly, and their talk continued over mouthfuls of falafel.

“Thanks,” Steve said. “For not asking about the flood.”

Tony shrugged. “Thanks for not asking about Ty.”

It was past one in the morning when Steve found himself yawning and rubbing at his eyes. Tony was still bright-eyed, adding cream and flavored syrup to a coffee he’d just brewed, testing the temperature with the tip of his pinky finger. But he took in Steve’s clearly waning energies and said, “Let’s call it a night. You’re welcome to come back next week.” He offered it as if they were old friends with a long history. “I’m happy to talk more. About Nonnina, or anything, really.”

They made plans to get together again a week later. Steve spent the intervening days in his usual routines. He worked on illustration assignments from his apartment: watercolors in his attic bedroom, where southern sunlight flooded across his the dingy gray carpeting and illuminated his easel; and digital pieces at his computer, where he tried not to compare his setup too much to Tony’s. He had a project drawing the life cycle of sequoias for a journal on ecological conservation and brought home a pile of their cones and strips of bark to inspire his senses. He went foraging for mushrooms, made roasted root vegetables, and found wild garlic growing in his local park. Lucky joined him during the day a couple of times, accompanying him on his morning jogs and then napping at his feet while he drew. He stopped by the dispensary where Clint worked. On Friday, he and Clint and Natasha went to the Twa Corbies for drinks. They had a new barback, a guy who’d gone to high school with them, and Steve hoped he’d quit or at least stop taking Friday evening shifts. Running into people he was obligated to talk to was his least favorite part of living in his hometown; knowing the area and people’s routines well enough to avoid them was all that made up for it.

When Steve returned to the mansion as planned, Tony brought him straight down to his basement workshop. This one was filled with holograms, projections, and glass beakers and jars. Rain spattered against the high windows, spilling and roiling cozily, like onions sizzling in a hot pan of butter. Steve had been worried about finding something to talk about once the topic of Elettra and Sylvana was exhausted, but Tony was a burble of speech and questions, even as he disassembled a flip phone, an e-reader, a drawing tablet, and several smartphones. It turned out that they had read some of the same scientific studies—whenever Steve had a commission for a magazine or journal, they would send him a copy with his piece in it, and he liked to read through them to keep abreast of all the topics he might be called on to illustrate for someday. Tony ended up bringing out past volumes he’d had stashed away somewhere, trying to find one that included Steve’s illustrations, while Steve insisted he could just pull up pictures on his phone.

Tony shared anecdotes about some of the men he’d dated, and Steve a few about Peggy. Steve didn’t bring up Tiberius Stone, and none of Tony’s stories mentioned him by name. Every story Steve told about his childhood was a story about Bucky, of course, but Tony never asked why Steve always used the past tense to describe him.

Tony brought up the subject of his mother’s death a couple of times, and mentioned that he went to the beach every month in part to commemorate her. Steve shared his story of his own mother passing away, of singing her favorite song—the Beatles’ “Blackbird”—at her funeral. In reply, Tony described the service for his father, how guilty he’d felt for not crying, how he’d gotten into a screaming match at the cemetery with his father’s best friend and CEO and then had to see him at work the next morning when he began his role leading the company his father had passed onto him. Something in Tony’s voice gave Steve the idea that he wasn’t used to talking about his father.

“It was Peggy’s idea to go into the water,” Steve said, feeling both compelled to and safe enough to share. “I’m supposed to be this hero, but it’s just because I survived. I would have done anything Peggy said.”

Tony set down his tools and looked at Steve. Steve tried not to squirm under his gaze. Looking into Tony’s eye’s was like falling into the Pacific Ocean. And Steve would know.

“You still saved all those people,” Tony said quietly. “That was you, Steve.”

Steve shook his head. “It was Peggy and Bucky, and then me.” His mouth twisted into a wry smile. “It usually was.”

“You’re not a bad person just because you survived and they didn’t,” Tony said, and Steve wondered how he knew exactly what Steve had been thinking. If maybe he knew because there was someone who made him feel the same way.

“Yeah, but. I’m still alive, and they aren’t. Seems pretty damning.”

Tony tilted his head, considering. “Why does knowing about her grandmother help?”

“I don’t know,” Steve admitted. He thought about it. “Bucky’s parents live in town, still. I see them pretty often. And we grew up together, and just, all my memories of being here, of living here, I mean, of the places—like, of the beach, of swimming in the sea, of exploring the redwoods, of playing hide-and-go-seek in a vineyard, all of that, those are memories of Bucky. It’s like he’s part of living here. But Peggy doesn’t have any close family left in town, just some second cousins and great-uncles here and there, and she just—she always seemed like she was more.” He chewed on his lip, glanced up at Tony. “Have you ever met someone, and right away, maybe before they’ve opened their mouth, they’re just, lit up? Like fireworks.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, a strange roughness to his voice. “I have.”

“That’s what meeting Peggy was like. Maybe being a teenager made it seem more exciting,” he said, his mouth quirking up at one side. “But it was always like she was bigger than anything else. And so, Bucky—I’m sad he’s gone, I’m sad every day, but in some ways it’s like he’s still here. I don’t miss him in the same way I do her. It doesn’t make sense, that someone that bright and alive could be gone.”

“Losing my mom was like that,” Tony said, his voice soft and tentative. “She knew everything, and then she was just—gone.”

“Learning about her—it reminds me of all the ways she was a person, all the things and people that made her who she was. Like Sylvana, and how much she was in love with Elettra.”

It was past 2 AM when Steve finally stumbled out of Tony’s workshop into the gently falling rain. Tony walked Steve out with a huge, old-fashioned black umbrella, and before he let him drive off in Clint’s car, extracted a promise from Steve to text him again.

 

_________

 

Two days later, Steve was at the Twa Corbies, trying to decide whether or not to text Tony.

“You’re ridiculous,” Natasha said, reaching across the table to snag one of his french fries.

“He was probably just being polite,” Steve said.

Natasha looked at him for a moment, then snatched his phone out of his hands.

“Hey!”

“Dear Tony,” Natasha narrated, typing into his phone. “I can’t stop thinking about you. Can I come over again? Love, Steve. PS: Did you murder Tiberius Stone?” Steve heard the small sound that meant a message had been sent. She passed him back his phone.

“Stone’s death was ruled accidental,” he said without thinking. “What did you really write?”

“Just what I said.”

What she had really sent was much more reasonable. _Hey, thanks for talking with me about all that! I had fun. Want to get together again sometime?_

“What do you do when you aren’t meddling in people’s lives?” Steve asked, pocketing his phone again.

“Looking into people’s lives,” Natasha said, taking a drink of her beer. It was true enough, at that, given that she was employed at a newspaper.

Before heading toward home, Steve stopped by the marijuana dispensary where Clint worked, High Tides. It was in the part of Old Town that had been hit hard by the earthquake five years previous. Both of the buildings on each side of it had been rebuilt from the ground up after and would have looked more at home in a strip mall or along a highway than among the quaint, Victorian-style storefronts of Old Town. Steve was glad that High Tides itself was still in an old wooden building set back from the street. He didn’t like remembering the earthquake. He liked remembering the flood even less, though it had done far less property damage, so the reminders came in different forms.  

High Tides catered to customers with medical cards, which Steve didn’t have, so he waited outside and chatted with Luke—whose job it was to stand outside, check people’s IDs and medical cards, and look intimidating, though Steve wasn’t sure if he was more of a bouncer or a security guard or a greeter—while he waited for Clint to come out.

Steve was worrying he and Luke had run out of mutual interest in baseball and acquaintances in common just as Clint emerged, trailed by Lucky. His tail wagged lazily as he approached.

“You here to steal my dog’s affections again?” Clint asked.

“Not my fault your dog has taste,” Steve send, bending over to pet Lucky behind the ears.

“Ouch,” Clint said. “I’ll stop by your place on my way home to get him, around 8?”

“Great,” Steve agreed. “I’ll make sure he’s eaten nothing but bacon and brisket for when you get back.”

After Steve and Lucky made their goodbyes to Clint and Luke, the rain began to let up. It soon gave way to a thick fog, gray and all-encompassing. While High Tides customers loved meeting Lucky and showering him with affection, he would still end up antsy after a full workday stuck inside. Steve could relate. He’d prefer to spend all day in his apartment or going on walks than having to interact with customers, too.

He took a roundabout way back to his apartment, circling the same blocks over again and turning into alleyways, hunting for blackberries. It was late in the season for them and many were sodden with rainwater, but it wasn’t long before Steve had nearly a pound of them. Growing up, he’d often picked fruit, nuts, and greens from public places around town—and even, on occasion, from the gardens of certain neighbors who didn’t make use of them. He liked the feeling of productivity it gave him, the idea that even when he was just walking around and enjoying the sights of the town or exploring a park, he was achieving something. Blackberries were the easiest to collect and probably the most abundant. They grew all over town, in gullies, beside old train tracks, overflowing off of greenways and the planting strips along the sidewalk. Lucky walked alongside him, finding plenty of smells to investigate each time Steve stopped to pick berries.

By the time they reached his building, Steve’s galoshes were spattered with mud, his jeans were stuck through with blackberry thorns, and his fingertips were bleeding a little and stained purple with berry juice. The air smelled of petrichor and wood smoke. Best of all, he had more than enough berries to fill two pies. He’d have extra to save and make jam with at the end of the season. Buoyed by the accomplishment, he barely cared when Lucky shook his damp fur all over Steve’s kitchen floor, and his mood was only improved when he opened his phone to a text from Tony.

 

 **Tony:** _love to_  
**Tony:** _wanna come by my place again?_ _  
_ **Tony:** _how’s Wednesday?_

 

Steve and Natasha had their monthly dinner with the Barneses on Wednesday, which Steve didn’t like to miss. Or to leave Nat to handle on her own. Especially this time of year.

 

 **Steve:** _is Thursday okay?_

 

Steve sent it off, then busied himself with washing the blackberries and preparing pie crust. It was some time later and with flour-coated hands that he got a reply.

 

 **Tony:** _sure_ _  
_ **Tony:** _how’s 5:30?_

 **Steve:** _sounds good_

 **Tony:** _I can feed you_  
**Tony:** _uh wow lemme rephrase that_  
**Tony:** _I mean I’ll have food for you_  
**Tony:** _not just for you, for me too_ _  
_ **Tony:** _I mean we’ll eat dinner_

 

Steve chuckled. The flurry of texts came so quickly that Steve barely had time to finish reading one before the next arrived. He’d never gotten fast at typing on the tiny screen on his phone like some people did and often had to cancel a reply he’d started writing so he could see his whole screen.

 

 **Steve:** _how do you type so fast?_

 **Tony:** _oh!_  
**Tony:** _speech to text_  
**Tony:** _duh_  
**Tony:** _I’m building a robot right now_ _  
_ **Tony:** _so I don’t have hands free to type_

 **Steve:** _what kind of robot?_

 **Tony:** _um_ _  
_ **Tony:** _turtle?_

 **Steve:** _turtle?_

 **Tony:** _:turtle emoji:_

 **Steve:** _I meant what does it do_ _  
_ **Steve:** _I thought maybe it was a vacuum or chef or something_

 **Tony:** _that sounds_  
**Tony:** _practical_  
**Tony:** _the turtle robot walks around on four legs_  
**Tony:** _she’s very good at sandy terrain_  
**Tony:** _and her chassis is sort of round and her legs and camera retract inside it_  
**Tony:** _I’m trying to arrange all the parts so she’s weighted so if she lands on her back it’s easy for her to roll back onto her feet_  
**Tony:** _anyway_  
**Tony:** _I found some boxes of old photos_  
**Tony:** _most of them are from when I was a kid but there should be some of my mom and my grandma in there too_ _  
_ **Tony:** _if you’re interested_

 **Steve:** _yes, definitely_

 **Tony:** _sweet_  
**Tony:** _it’s a plan_  
**Tony:** _see you Thursday_ _  
_ **Tony:** _you can meet Artemisia_

 **Steve:** _who?_

 **Tony:** _the turtle bot_ _  
_ **Tony:** _obviously_

 **Steve:** _okay_

 **Tony:** _all turtles are named after classical Italian painters_ _  
_ **Tony:** _everyone knows that_

 

They continued to text after that. Tony sent a photo of a tortoise trying to eat a slice of pizza—with a caption about how he knew it wasn’t really a turtle, whether teenage, mutant, or otherwise—followed by a video of Artemisia walking over a tangle of wires. Steve replied with a photo of the pie he was working on, then a video of Lucky catching bits of pie dough in his mouth as Steve tossed them in his direction. In response, he received a video of one of Tony’s cats—a bicolor with white socks and yellow eyes identified as Phobos in the follow-up text—walking across a worktable and stepping a paw into every empty coffee mug on the way.

Dinner at the Barnes house that Wednesday went as expected. Natasha told bland stories about her coworkers at the _Cuarzo Free Press_. Steve described his latest illustration assignment. Bucky’s sister, Riva, dutifully updated everyone on how her classes at Cuarzo State University were going. Part of Steve ached to realize that, when he wasn’t actually speaking to her, he tended to forget what she was even majoring in. Now, eating spoonfuls of minestrone soup and sipping the wine Natasha had brought, he knew it was anthropology, but was sure he would forget before the next dinner.

Bucky’s mother, Winifred, asked repeatedly how the food was, as usual. It was, also as usual, excellent, and everyone assured her of it. Bucky’s father, George, remained characteristically silent throughout the meal, then gave long hugs as Steve and Natasha made their exit.

“We’ll always consider you family,” George said over Natasha’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You too, Steve,” George said, wrapping his arms around Steve once more. “Anything you need, you let me and Winnie know.”

Natasha and Steve walked in silence to the Twa Corbies. The somber mood continued at the bar. They sat side-by-side at the counter, brushing their shoulders against each other on occasion, and saying very little. Steve nursed a single beer while Nat went through three pints, though she showed no sign of the drinks affecting her. The rain was back in full by the time Steve walked home.  

He’d gotten three new cat photos from Tony. The first was of Phallas burying her head under the corner of an oriental rug, the second of Phobos trying to bat at a moth through a stained glass window. The third showed a black and white tiled floor that Steve thought was in Tony’s kitchen. A white cat sat curled in the middle of a large black tile, while a black cat stretched in the center of a matching white tile. The accompanying caption identified the white cat as Sirius and the black one as Cygnus.

 

 **Steve:** _I thought Sirius was a dog_

 **Tony:** _more importantly Sirius and Cygnus are a binary star system_  
**Tony:** _the cats are brothers_ _  
_ **Tony:** _Cygnus means swan I think_

 **Steve:** _so he’s a black swan?_

 **Tony:** _he’s a cat_ _  
_ **Tony:** _do you need your eyes checked?_

 

_________

 

Thursday arrived with a charcoal gray sky. The rain was back to a steady sprinkle. Clint, and thus his car, was out of town for the next few days, so Steve called a cab to get to the Carbonell Mansion. He spent the ride second-guessing all of his interactions with Tony thus far. Why had he been texting Steve so much? Did he really care about Steve’s baking and his friend’s dog and his sketches of wisteria? Steve doubted it. Unless Tony was just bored. No one had seen him leave his home for six months; maybe his standards had lowered and he was latching himself onto the first person to talk to him.

But no, it didn’t seem that way at all, not really. Maybe Steve was just flattering himself, but he felt like he’d started to get to know Tony, that what they had was really the beginning of a friendship, however unusual the circumstances of their meeting or the impetus Steve had had for meeting up with him again.

He was greeted at the door by Tony and Hygiea. Tony was dressed in linen pajamas nearly the same gray as the cat beside him. His feet were bare and the hems of his loose pants were ringed with mud.

“Oh my god, you brought pie!” Tony exclaimed as Steve shed his damp hoodie and tried to squeeze his umbrella into an umbrella stand that was already crowded with two umbrellas, a number of carved canes, what looked like a decorative lace parasol, and a sizable collection of walking-stick-sized branches.

Steve grinned. Just like that, he felt at ease again. “I brought pie.”

Tony took the pie from him with relish. “These are your stolen blackberries?”

He followed Tony into the kitchen, where Tony slipped the pie into an oven to warm. “Liberated,” Steve corrected, wondering what possible need Tony—or anyone—had for three ovens. “From public property.”

“So you insist. Hey, wanna meet Caravaggio?”

“Another turtlebot?” Steve guessed.

“I have him and Artemisia on an obstacle course, come see.”

Steve chuckled and followed Tony and his damp footprints toward the basement workshop, Hygiea trailing along.

Artemisia and Caravaggio were gunmetal gray and quite turtle-like in shape, though the way they walked reminded Steve more of a spider missing half their legs. Artemisia was a little bulkier and faster at the obstacles, though Caravaggio had more success at flipping himself back onto his feet after being rolled onto his back. Steve, Tony, and Hygiea watched the turtle robots race and flip each other over and interact until a timer went off upstairs.

“That’s the pie,” Tony said. “Wanna check out the photos I mentioned while we eat?”

“Sure,” Steve agreed.

Steve stayed in the kitchen and sliced the pie while Tony fetched several large archival boxes of photos and set them on stools beside the long wooden countertop in the middle of the room. “Don’t worry about getting crumbs or berries or anything on these,” Tony said. “Dig in!”

There were, indeed, a lot of photos. As Tony had said, most were from when he was growing up. There were a few posed ones of him with both of his parents, but the vast bulk of them were candids shots of Tony himself. Most of these sets were stacked inside the slippery paper envelopes that commercial photo developers used, with the negatives tucked into a smaller fold. Steve had forgotten about that aspect of film pictures. As he leafed through roll after roll, he saw that he’d also forgotten how many film photos turned out unusable or out of focus. In several rolls from when Tony appeared to be six or so years old, about half of each set was taken up by dark, gray-blue blurs.

“I was trying to photograph the moon,” Tony explained sheepishly. “For my seventh birthday, though, I got a decent light meter and a proper zoom lens and a tripod so...”

Sure enough, Steve soon found dozens of photos of the night sky. The moon, in various phases, was prominent in most, though others showed nothing but constellations, fields of stars with telephone lines or the edges of tree branches poking along the edges of the frame.

The packets of photos were all mixed together, with no chronology to be found. One would hold nothing but photos of the Italian countryside from a family vacation when Tony was 12, the next Tony at a science fair with his first robot at age 15, followed by Tony doing something with a circuit board at age 5. He seemed to always be constructing something, whether with blocks or wires or twigs.

There were a few here and there of Tony and Elettra or Tony and Maria. Elettra was a thin, wiry woman, who appeared in one beach photo with her hands on Tony’s shoulders and a huge black sunhat on her head, so big and round she was like a walking eclipse. Maria was taller and sturdier, with a determined blaze in her eyes. But Steve noticed that these photos were exceptions. Tony was alone in most of the pictures.

“Who took these?” he asked, as they polished off their second slices of pie.

“My mom, mostly,” Tony said, and Steve wondered who Tony had had in his life growing up beyond these two women. “Here’s one of Nonnina and me, I must have been, oh, 6 years old.”

The photo was a whirl of rich greens. Tony and his grandmother stood in a vineyard, surrounded by neat, striped rows of grapevines, emerald hills hazy in the distance. Tony was caught mid-laugh, Elettra smiling fondly down at him.

“Oh, I like this one, this is another good one. This is at our beach.” He waved a hand toward the ocean to indicate he meant the private beach at the mansion. “From the summer we moved back here.”

The photo showed Tony beside a vast driftwood fort. The opening looked to be only four or so feet high, but the inside would have fit most adults without them having to bend over. The floor was dug out of the sand a few feet deep and tiled with flat pieces of smooth wood. Elettra was in these photos, too, one photo showing her emerge from inside the fort, another of her piling rocks against the foundation of the fort’s walls. Her long white hair was coming out of its loose ponytail. The rest of the roll was pictures of the inside of the fort, where there were shelves and seats, and a window made of plastic water bottles with mollusk shells lining the sill.

Eventually, Tony professed a craving for savory food. He disappeared down a passage in the floor to an underground pantry and returned with a large, rustic loaf of bread. He cut it into pieces and laid it out on a marble board with a few rounds of cheese and a dish of apple slices. They munched companionably and continued digging through the pictures. Outside the glass doors, the rain wore on, the sound of drops hitting the glass nearly overpowering the rushing sound of the ocean.

“Are these shadow puppets?”

Tony, who had just returned from letting three damp cats in from the garden, leaned over to examine the photo. “Oh,” he said, his voice somewhat subdued. “I remember that day.” He plucked the photo from Steve’s hand. “Yeah, they’re shadow puppets.”

The photo showed a pair of small hands—undoubtedly Tony’s—forming a complicated gesture that cast a hazy, but very comprehensible, shape of a rabbit against a wall. Steve flipped through the other pictures in the roll. The hand contortions grew increasingly complicated. A pair of bird heads with a gap between fingers for the negative space of their eyes. A deer with curled antlers. A monkey with a tail made long and curving by the angle of a pinky finger against the light source. A series of five pictures showed variations on a human shadow-head making a different expression in each one.

“My mom taught me,” Tony said, as Steve continued to look through the roll with the shadow puppet pictures.

Steve suppressed a gasp when he got to the next photo. This one showed Tony himself, not just his hands, as he crouched beside a bare bulb extending from a metal box that was crowded with visible circuits and wires. Steve suspected the contraption was made by Tony himself. Tony looked to be 9 or 10 years old at the most. One small fist made a shape that cast onto the wall the shell of a snail, resting against the other hand, which splayed two fingers to form its antennae.

What was most striking about the picture, though, was the huge black eye the child-Tony sported and the red handprints on his arms.

Steve stared at the photo for a moment, unsure of what to do, whether to say anything. Finally he slipped the photo behind the others to reveal another picture showing just hands and shadow. He thought he heard Tony exhale.

“My mom always taught me things when I was upset,” Tony went on, as if nothing unusual had occurred. “I was always getting in arguments with my dad, nicking things from his workshop he wasn’t finished with, that kind of thing. Teaching me something new was the best way to distract me.”

That, Steve suspected, was all the explanation he was going to get. He certainly didn’t feel comfortable following the topic any further. “They’re beautiful,” he said instead.

“Yeah,” Tony agreed. Steve flipped the next photo over to reveal a pair of hands arranged to cast the silhouette of a unicorn’s head on the wall. “Plus, I learned how to use shadows to demonstrate that the earth is round. I think she gave me a lecture on lunar eclipses and negative space, too,” he added thoughtfully.

They continued looking through the photos and chatting. Steve found three rolls containing nothing but photos of hands forming complicated cat’s cradle patterns with a circle of red yarn. Some were step-by-step, but most showed the final results. He recognized a Jacob’s ladder, and the titular form itself, but didn’t remember the names of any other formations. One made a large five-pointed star that looked a bit like a pentagram. The photos mostly had two pairs of hands in them, and more zoomed out shots showed Tony and his grandmother creating the shapes together. She looked older and thinner in these, her hair trailing off her shoulders in pale wisps.

Nereid arrived to paw at the door to be let out, then returned to beat at it with one paw ten minutes later. Not long after, a tortoiseshell cat sauntered into the room, leapt onto the wooden counter, and settled down for a nap curled on top of a crumb-covered cutting board.

It was easy to tell the photos that were taken before Tony and Maria moved to Nublado from the ones that were taken after. The ones in New York were nearly all inside, full of harsh shadows cast by a camera flash that went off to fill in the dim indoor light. They showed the sparse, white walls of office buildings and bedroom windows that looked out onto packed city streets. The photos from Cuarzo County were dynamic and sunlit: Tony caught mid-leap as he jumped from the top of a jagged, house-sized rock on the beach, frightening a seagull into flight; Tony opening up an old PC tower to show the circuit boards, a kelly-green wire wrapped around one hand in a curve reminiscent of the cat’s cradle photos from earlier; Tony under an archway positively smothered in ivy and tea roses; Tony lying on a couch with his feet in the air over the back cushions, his head dangling off the seat, a mid-90’s laptop perched against his knees, his fingers moving over the keyboard so fast they blurred.

“I need coffee,” Tony announced, getting to his feet and heading to the coffee maker. Soon Tony was pouring coffee, testing the temperature of his own cup with his pinky finger, while Steve used the pause in the proceedings to check his phone for messages. When he saw the newest email in his inbox he nearly gasped out loud.

“What’s up?” Tony asked, shaking drops of coffee off his hand.

“Helen Cho is giving a talk Saturday at UC Berkeley.”

Tony’s eyebrows shot up. “The Helen Cho who won the Albert Einstein World Award of Science last year and the Wolf Foundation Prize the year before that?”

“That’s the one. She’s kinda one of my heroes,” Steve said, feeling sheepish. He set his phone down and brushed his hair away from his forehead.

“Oh yeah, she does medical illustration too, right?”

“Yeah, she does nearly all of the illustrations for her papers herself. She says it’s a big part of her research process, to do her own anatomical studies. I’ve been wanting to hear her speak.” She’d visited Cuarzo State University a few years back, but it was in the middle of—well. Steve hadn’t been able to attend her talk.

“You should go,” Tony said.

“Wish I could,” Steve sighed.

“What’s stopping you?”

“Well, first off, I don’t have a car.”

Tony shrugged. “I can drive you. Sounds like fun. Helen owes me a coffee, anyway.”

Steve tried not to gape. He wasn’t sure which part of that pronouncement was more stunning. Probably the offer to drive all the way to the Bay Area from someone he barely knew. Yeah, that was the place to start. “I couldn’t possibly—it’s going to take at least four hours each way—”

“I could loan you a car if that would be less weird,” Tony said. “But now I want to go anyway, so we’d just both be driving down and wasting gas. C’mon, I can’t remember the last time I went to a scientific talk with someone who actually gave a shit. Can’t you indulge an eccentric rich recluse?” He tucked his hands under his chin and batted his eyelashes outlandishly.

It was so absurd Steve had to laugh. “Okay,” he said out loud before he’d consciously realized he was going to agree.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Steve said more firmly.


	3. The Ocean

Every breath Steve took was overwhelmed by brine and salt. The ocean was everywhere. The ocean was everything. One wave crested and crashed and another was already cresting and crashing in its place, overlapping, simultaneous. He was gasping, the smell of sea all-encompassing, so strong he could taste it. Had he swallowed sea water? 

Another rhythm overlaid the breaking waves, but he couldn’t make it out. He thought maybe it was his breath, but no, that was erratic, ragged, he was panting and calling out. He remembered drowning, remembered frigid water filling his lungs and coating the inside of his throat. This wasn’t that. This was—the opposite, maybe. He wasn’t suffocating in the water, it was suffocating in him. No. No, that wasn’t it either. 

He gasped again and thought he might be floating. A flash of gold caught in the corner of his eye. He and the sea had escaped the restraints of gravity. Without looking up, he knew there would be a full moon in the sky above, swollen and round and calling to him, to the ocean. The moon pulled the sea, didn’t it? That was it, he thought dimly. He was flying, he was the ocean, he was reaching toward the moon. He canted his hips toward the shining light, opened his mouth and called to it. The moon encircled him in answer. 

Steve woke to the battered wooden beams of his bedroom ceiling. A songbird chirped outside his window. 

A dream, then. He’d been dreaming of the sea his whole life. Not surprising, growing up on the coast, spending so much of his childhood at the beach. This one was more vivid than usual, and even as he hauled himself out of bed and shuffled downstairs to brush his teeth and make his breakfast, it felt weighty. He peeled tangerines and watched his morning tea steep, and still the dream lingered, still felt significant. 


	4. Chapter 2 - Two for Mirth

The first time Steve realized he wanted to kiss Tony, it was 5:45 in the morning, the car smelled like a skunk’s stink, and they were talking about roadkill. 

Tony had arrived at 5:30 on the dot Saturday morning to pick Steve up, knocking on Steve’s door and carrying a massive thermos of coffee so dark and shiny it looked more like a science fiction missile than a beverage conveyance. He was wearing loose boots that looked more like slippers, a pair of sweatpants that were fitted enough to be nearly fashionable, and a baggy red Cal hoodie. 

“I thought you went to MIT,” Steve said when he noticed it, ducking out of the door and locking it behind him. 

“Did some grad work at Berkeley,” Tony replied. “Seemed appropriate.” 

He led Steve down the stairs to a small black car of a type Steve didn’t recognize, but Tony explained was a prototype: “it runs on a new power source. It can drive itself, too, but that’s not legal yet.” Looking at it, Steve was worried he’d be too tall and wide for it but found it surprisingly roomy inside. 

The early-morning fog clung to the ground in a white cloud. Visibility dwindled to almost nothing just two blocks out, the mist a pale smear over everything, and Tony had the headlights on even as the sun dawned bright ahead of them. Despite what Tony had said about not letting the car drive itself, his hands hung slack on the steering wheel, barely seeming to hold onto it, and Steve couldn’t help but wonder how much direct control he really had over the car. He found he also couldn’t help staring at Tony’s hands, watching how each knuckle bent at elegant angles, how the lines of his veins flexed slightly as he tapped his fingers in a cascade along the steering wheel, like he was playing a piano.

They’d driven less than a mile out of town and the 101 hadn’t even changed from a two-lane road to a proper highway yet when they smelled it. 

“Wow,” Tony said, hitting a button to cycle the air only from inside the car and not take any more from outside. “That’s pungent.” 

“Joint, or actual skunk?” 

“Oh, definitely an actual skunk, do you want me to open a window so you can get a better whiff?” 

“Don’t you dare,” Steve said, laughing a little. “Skunks always smell kind of like sesame oil to me. Like you just poured a bunch of it out, way too much, and now you’re regretting it.”

Tony hummed thoughtfully. “I always thought horses smelled like white pepper.” 

“I thought you didn’t cook.” 

“I still know what spices are, Steve,” Tony said with exaggerated hurt. 

“Do you think the skunk is alive?” 

“Well, smelling a skunk is good luck, so I’m going to say it’s alive, since I prefer it if they sprayed and bolted, and we’re having such good luck and all.” He turned and smiled at Steve then, a broad, effortless thing that made something surge and clutch inside of Steve. It rushed him like the tide coming in, watching that smile: watching it transform his face, seeing Tony’s eyes catch the marigold-bright light of the sun, noticing the soft crow’s feet that curved up in little smiles of their own at the corners of his eyes. 

He’d found Tony attractive from the moment he opened his eyes on Keyhole Beach—before then, too, in the more abstract way that he knew strangers and famous people were good-looking. Steve had plenty of attractive friends. He should be used to it; he didn’t think it was bias that made him think that Natasha’s good looks were on par with a starlet or that Clint’s jawline, biceps, and love for sleeveless shirts wouldn’t be out of place in an action film. But watching that smile, those wild bright eyes, Steve found it went beyond that, that he felt an unexpected longing and a very specific desire to kiss Tony breathless. 

Steve swallowed. “Yep,” he agreed. “Skunk definitely survived.” 

Soon were winding through the contours and switchbacks of the redwoods at speeds much higher than the road signs advised. Tony clearly enjoyed driving fast, even when his failure to slow down on some of the curves made Steve feel like his stomach had been left somewhere back in Nublado. 

Outside of Rio Dell, Tony darted the car around an RV with the word  _ Lance _ emblazoned on it and started chuckling. “Do you have any road trip or car games you play?” 

“Not really,” Steve said. The only road trip he could remember was one to Yosemite when he’d been a kid, and “I Spy” had been the name of the game then. 

“Okay, you’ll love this one. You know how RVs all have these names on them? Not the maker, like Winnebago or Airstream or whatever. They’re models, I guess. The ones like ‘tiger’ or ‘Orion.’” 

“Right, okay.” 

“The game is you take those names and put the word ‘anal’ somewhere in there.” 

“What?” Steve laughed. “Why?” 

“I don’t know, it just works! ‘Anal lance,’ it sounds like a sex toy. ‘Spirit anal,’ ‘anal cougar,’ ‘wildcat anal.’ Some are inherently funny—like ‘north wind anal,’ I hope you like fart jokes—others you need to come up with stories to explain what the fuck they are.” 

“I’ll keep an eye out.” 

It was easy to talk to Tony. Tony talked the most, at first, pointing out when they were approaching a famous redwood, then a monument to corn among the Avenue of the Giants, sharing anecdotes about people he’d met at a store selling gemstones or a roadside stand selling chainsaw-carved statues of Bigfoot. But soon Steve found his voice, too, and they talked and talked, words answering words like a beach meeting waves. They talked about the reactor powering the car, about Steve’s favorite pieces by Helen Cho, about their mothers, about cooking and eating, building robots and drawing flowers and collecting berries from the roadside. Steve started to enjoy the speed, too, to find it exhilarating. Tony never seemed to do anything unsafe, or get stuck behind someone driving slowly, or hit construction or closed lanes, so it was easy to feel complacent, like they were alone on the highway and the few other vehicles they passed were there to fill out the scenery. 

Near the drive-through tree in Myer’s Flat, they passed several RVs in a row. 

“‘Allegro,’” Tony read. “‘Anal allegro,’ it’s a notation for fucking at a fast tempo. You know, when you’re transcribing a porno onto sheet music so another conductor can run the same scene later on.” 

“‘Dutch star anal,’” Steve said. “A five-pointed sex toy?” 

“No no,” Tony said, shaking his head gravely. “It’s when you’ve hired people from the Netherlands to build your planet-killing moon-sized space station.” 

“Where does the anal part fit in?” 

“Damnit, I knew I was missing something.” 

“Only the main part of your own joke!” 

“Shut up, my Star Wars joke was excellent.” 

Between Ukiah and Cloverdale, Tony’s story about a prank played on Noam Chomsky was interrupted by another RV coming into view. This one had “Sunrise” emblazoned on the sides and a spare tire hanging over the bumper, accompanied by teal stripes and the silhouettes of seagulls. 

“‘Anal sunrise’ sounds like it would be a joke ‘cock’-tail at a certain kind of gay bar,” Tony observed. 

“I was thinking a saucy yoga position,” Steve admitted, thinking Tony’s was much better.

Outside Santa Rosa, Tony’s story about the Hopland Solar Living Center was interrupted by another RV coming into view. “Can you read it?” Tony was already changing lanes to approach it. “I can’t read it yet.” 

“‘Surveyor,’” Steve read when it was in view. 

“I think an ‘anal surveyor’ is a job where you go and, you know, check all the anuses. Like a titty inspector.” 

“An important job,” Steve agreed. “There’s another RV in front of it.” 

“Oh, is it a caravan?” 

“Doesn’t look like it.” The ‘surveyor’ RV took an exit toward a gas station. “This one is a ‘sightseer.’” 

“Yeah, ‘anal sightseer’ is what you are when anus inspecting is more of a weekend hobby,” Tony said, totally straight-faced. “Not a  _ real _ connoisseur, just checking out the most famous and majestic of anuses.” 

On the outskirts of Petaluma, something occurred to Steve. “Are you worried about being recognized in Berkeley?” he asked. He didn’t know everything about Tony’s reasons for keeping a low profile, but it struck him that the Bay Area, and a campus specifically, were full of people more likely to know and care who Tony was. 

“Nah. I’m good at blending in,” was all Tony said. 

Steve was worried he’d put his foot in his mouth after that, but conversation still streamed between them as easily as ever, peppered here and there by one calling out the name of an RV or by Tony pointing out an interesting vintage car. They reached San Rafael much sooner than Steve expected, and he was surprised further by how clear the traffic was not only on the bridge into Richmond, but also on the freeway coming into Berkeley. He couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t hit rush-hour levels of congestion between Albany and Emeryville, no matter the season, day of the week, or time of day. Before he knew it they were in Berkeley, rapidly approaching the exit for the university. 

“We’re early,” Steve said after Tony got them off the freeway and had them speeding down University Avenue. “How did you do that?” 

Tony’s face was transformed by a smile. Steve hoped he’d never stop. “Well, we had good luck! That skunk, and all.” Outside the car windows, the warehouses, parking lots, and box stores at the edge of town were giving way to condos and chain hotels. 

“Plus, you drive very fast.”  

Tony laughed, and Steve didn’t know whether he wanted more to kiss Tony or make him laugh again and again. Both, probably. “I’m an excellent driver,” he said. 

“Better than I am, that’s for sure,” Steve conceded. 

“Not a car person?” 

“I don’t mind cars, really, just don’t care much for driving them. Now, a motorcycle—that I could go for.” 

“Why don’t you?” 

Steve shrugged. “It just seems too impractical.” 

“You could get a sidecar for your friend’s dog,” Tony suggested. “Sounds pretty practical to me.” 

“Lucky would love that,” Steve agreed through laughter. 

Talk of motorcycles carried them all the way to campus, past the shops selling saris and Indian jewelry, past car washes and furniture stores to the blocky, stucco apartment buildings and convenience stores, all the way to the densely packed array of restaurants, copy shops, and specialty shops that signaled their increasing proximity to the university. 

It wasn’t long before the white buildings and terracotta tiled roofs of campus were in sight, and Steve was keeping an eye out for parking. University Avenue reached an end and Tony made an abrupt U-turn, pulling into a tiny parking place between a bicycle shop and a brightly decorated shack selling Brazilian coffee. As small as the car was, it wasn’t as tiny as something like a Smart Car, and Steve was impressed Tony had fit it into the narrow spot. 

“Since we’re early we can take the scenic route to the talk,” Tony said, hopping out. “Parking on campus is always bonkers, anyway.” 

“It usually is on University, too,” Steve pointed out. 

Tony grinned and sauntered over to the machine to pay for parking. “That skunk must have made us very lucky.” 

 

_________

 

They meandered through a eucalyptus grove, down tree-lined roads, past chattering squirrels and cooing pigeons. The campus paths were well-trafficked with pedestrians, bicyclists, cars, busses, and the occasional skateboarder. Steve let Tony guide them along the curving tracks, trusting that his knowledge of campus was better than Steve’s. Steve had only been there once or twice himself, and the institutional buildings ran together for him. 

It was still 15 minutes before the lecture was due to start when Tony led them into the right building, straight into the auditorium, and toward a pair seats. 

The talk was everything Steve hoped it would be. Helen Cho was an excellent speaker and had fascinating things to say about her process both as an artist and a scientist. The crowd began to disperse during the question and answer period, but Steve and Tony stayed behind without having to discuss it. 

After Dr. Cho took the last question, Tony leaned into Steve’s space to whisper in his ear. Steve hoped the shiver under his skin wasn’t apparent from the outside. “Mind waiting until everyone else has cleared out?” 

“No problem.” 

Dr. Cho stayed after, too, greeting people in the audience and chatting with colleagues. Tony took out his phone and began typing rapidly, while Steve people-watched. 

Soon there were only a handful of people still in the auditorium, and Dr. Cho turned in their direction with a bright smile. 

“Is that you, Tony?” 

Tony got to his feet, smiling in return. “In the flesh.” 

Steve followed Tony out of the aisle of seats, watching as Tony and Dr. Cho shared a quick embrace. 

“Were you here for the whole talk? I didn’t see you in the audience,” she said. 

Tony scoffed. “Of course I was here for the whole thing. Brilliant, as always. Helen, this is Steve, he’s an artist too, and a big fan of yours. Steve, Helen.” 

Face flushing at that introduction, Steve managed a shaky smile and to extend a hand in greeting. 

“Great to meet you, Steve,” she said, shaking his hand. “How long are you in town for?” 

“We were just planning on staying for the afternoon, why?” Tony asked. 

“Well I’m flying out tomorrow, this whole thing was so last minute, after all,” Helen said. “But Jo and Friday are having a little get-together tonight, you know, a bit of the old Berkeley crowd and some of their students. I know you’ve been working with that Williams kid. She’d love to see you while you’re down here. You’d be more than welcome.” 

Tony’s eye flicked to Steve. “Sounds great,” he said. “Send me the info? Maybe we’ll see you there.” 

Tony and Helen chatted a bit more, discussing friends and colleagues in common, before they said their goodbyes. 

“Well?” Tony said as they made their way back through campus. “Want to go to a scientist party?” 

“Love to,” Steve said. “I’m caught up on work for now. But do you need to be back up tonight for anything?” 

Tony waved a hand in dismissal. “Nah, I’m all set.” 

“So, what should I expect from a scientist party?” 

“Well, it’s a lot like a regular party, I guess, except that people tend to use longer and longer words the drunker they get,” Tony said thoughtfully. “Watch out, once you get someone going about their specialty, they’ll never shut up.” 

“Depending on their specialty, I might not want them to.” 

Tony chuckled. “You say that now. Be careful what you wish for.” 

“So scientists drink and carouse like the rest of us mere mortals?” 

Tony hesitated for a moment. “Yeah, mostly. I, uh, don’t any more. Drink, I mean.” 

Steve didn’t know what to say. “Oh,” was all that came out. 

“Yeah,” Tony said, attempting a breezy tone. “I’m taking a break, after everything. I’m not, y’know, in a program or anything. Though some might say I should be,” he added under his breath. Louder, he went, on, “Just, making sure I can do it, kind of thing.” 

“That’s great,” Steve said, feeling awkward. 

“Right, well, we have some time to kill before the shindig.” They drew back up to Tony’s car, which unlocked on its own as they approached. “A couple friends of mine have a restaurant in Oakland, totally trendy and amazing, wanna check it out?” 

“Sure,” Steve said, relieved for the subject change. “What kind of food is it?” 

Tony shot him a toothy grin as they climbed into the car. “You’ll see.” 

“Oh, it’s like that then,” Steve said, smiling back. “Alright. So, how do you know Dr. Cho?” 

Tony’s smile glittered. “Now there’s a good story. So, okay. The year is 2009…” 

Tony’s story—which featured disassembling a car and reassembling it inside a faculty building, a high-stakes game of Operation, and more vodka cranberries than was probably wise—carried them across University Avenue to San Pablo Avenue. Steve took in the sights of Berkeley giving way to Oakland. They passed and were passed by countless bicyclists: bicyclists carrying trash bags bulging with empty bottles for recycling; bicyclists in workout clothes with yoga mats; bicyclists in 3-piece suits balancing a briefcase on the handlebars. 

It was warmer and drier down here than up in Cuarzo, but still chilly. It couldn’t be more than 55F, cool enough for Steve to wear closed-toed shoes and carry a jacket with him in case the temperature dropped. But beside the people walking and biking by in long pants and long-sleeved shirts were people in short-shorts and sleeveless tops, then still more in full winter getups of wool coats, scarves, and knit hats. 

His favorite thing about the city was how, even on a six-lane road crowded with traffic and cars double-parked in the bike lanes, there were greenways and planting strips dense with plants. Just on the short drive to the restaurant, he saw agapanthus, poppies, Russian sage, agave, coneflowers, allium lilies, and black-eyed Susans. This time of year, few were in bloom, but the plants were still lush and green. 

Soon Tony made another sudden U-turn and pulled into a parking spot in front of a small brick storefront with big aluminum planters of sunflowers on either side of the door. “Here we are,” he announced. 

“‘Goliath’s Head?’” Steve read from the sign. “Is this where we’re going?” 

“You’re gonna love it,” Tony assured him, hopping out of the car. 

“I wasn’t worried,” Steve said, joining him on the sidewalk. “Just impressed you found this parking place.” 

“You’ll be even more impressed by the food.” 

Instead of leading them inside, Tony pulled Steve to a mint-green bistro table set back from the sidewalk. 

A server soon arrived to give them a pair of leather-bound menus. “Hey, if Hank or Jan are in, can you tell them Tony is here?” Tony said. 

“Will do,” the server said. “I take it you’re familiar with the concept here at Goliath’s Head, then?” 

“Yep,” Tony said. “He isn’t, let me give him the rundown?” 

“Sure thing.” The server gave them a bright smile. “I’ll be back in a few to get your drink orders.” 

“Thanks.” 

“‘Concept?’” Steve asked, picking up the menu. “Should I be worried?” 

“More of a gimmick,” Tony said. “A very well-executed gimmick. They place with scale. Are you familiar with dollhouse miniatures?” 

“I mean, I know what they are.” 

“So, dolls and dollhouses come in different scales, right. A dream house for a Barbie is going to a different size from an American Girl Doll.” 

“Okay, that makes sense.” 

“So they’re sold in different scales. Your classic dollhouse is 1:12. That means something that’s one foot in real life—like a ruler or a big hardcover book or a shoe—is one inch.” 

Steve grinned. “Of course you would want to go somewhere that combines food and math.” 

“Well, it’s also delicious,” Tony said. “There are smaller scales too; 1:144 is your ‘dollhouse for a dollhouse scale,’ but they don’t go that small here.” 

“So the food comes in miniature sizes,” Steve said. 

“Yeah, and you pick what scale you want. 1:12 is the smallest they go here, though I’m sure they’re working on 1:24. They also have 1:6, which is your Barbie size, and 1:3, which is American Girl Doll size.”

“How do you get enough food?” Steve started reading the menu. Sure enough, it was divided into sections by the different scales. “Order 12 of something?” 

“You could, and a standard order of any dish 3 to 6 of each mini dish, but part of the fun is getting a variety, like an adorable little tasting menu,” Tony said. “They also have giant scale food, though not as much. 2x, 4x, and 8x. See, that guy over there” —Tony pointed to a diner at another small table not far away— “has a 4x stuffed zucchini, if I’m not mistaken.” 

Steve craned his head to look. On an extra-large plate, nearly covering the round table top, was a huge zucchini, the kind that won prizes at state fairs, stuffed with what appeared to be regular sized beans, tomatoes, and melted cheese. 

“It gets tricky with vegetables, but you should see the hot dogs and pizzas and tortilla chips,” Tony said. 

“I’ll stick with the miniatures this time, I think,” Steve said. “Are the drinks miniature too?” 

“You can order 1:1 drinks if you want, but I like to get a 2x pot of coffee and drink it out of a 1:3 size mug,” Tony said.  

“Of course you do.” 

“I’d get something bigger but the drinks don’t come larger than 2x,” he grumbled. 

Steve ended up getting a 2x pot of tea and 1:3 teacup, which made him feel like he was attending a fairy tea party. That, he suspected, was probably the point. 

He let Tony order for them both; he picked entirely 1:12 scale. Steve wasn’t sure their table would fit much more with the double-sized pots of tea and coffee, anyway. 

The server returned soon after and set up a dollhouse sized version of their bistro table and chairs and arranged it in the center of their table. Not long after she came back with a tray set with miniature serving carts, laden with small pans and plates of food. She set the carts around their miniature table, then placed the plates of their salad course on the mini bistro table itself. “Enjoy,” she said. 

Tony took his tiny plate of grilled romaine between two fingers and brought it to his lips. “Part of the fun is eating with your hands,” he said with a playful smile, before downing the whole thing in one bite. He licked his lips when he finished, and Steve wanted to lick Tony’s lips, too. 

The salad was followed by doll-sized crispy tofu in sweet chili black bean sauce, tiny mushrooms on miniature crostini with goat cheese, and little soft-shell crab po’ boys with spicy aïoli. It was easy to talk while eating the bite-sized food, and Tony peppered Steve with questions about his latest illustration projects, interrupted here and there by their people-watching. 

Pedestrians and bicyclists shuffled by, many with dogs of varying sizes. A man with a Great Pyrenees stopped so they could pet his dog, as did a couple pushing a pair of French bulldogs in a stroller. Buses with advertisements in Chinese, Korean, Spanish, and Arabic trundled by. 

They closed out the meal with little plates of mashed potatoes, itty-bitty servings of beef rib-eye, and little bowls of spicy eggplant and tomato soup. They were working on dessert—tiny crème brûlée, plum galettes, pistachio cakes, and bowls of strawberry sherbet—when a woman in a tailored yellow dress with thick shoulder pads walked up to their table. 

“Jan!” Tony exclaimed, getting up and spreading his arms wide. 

She responded in kind. After a quick hug, she said, “I didn’t know you were in town!” 

“Last-minute thing,” Tony said. “Jan, this is Steve. Steve, this is Janet Van Dyne, she and her husband Hank run this restaurant.”

“Nice to meet you,” Steve said, getting to his feet to shake her hand. 

“Lovely to meet you as well,” Jan said with a sparkling smile. Her dark hair, cut into a flapper bob with severe bangs, shone in the autumn light. 

“The food is amazing,” Steve said. “How do you make it so small?” 

“Just your run-of-the-mill culinary magic,” Jan said, chuckling to herself. 

“How’s business?” Tony asked. 

“Huge!” Jan said, then laughed at her own joke. “In fact, we’re in the final stages of getting a second location in the city.” 

“In San Francisco? That’s amazing!” Tony said. 

“Yeah! The Inner Sunset. I want to call it ‘Holofernes’ Head,’ but Hank says no one will get it,” Jan said with a small pout. 

Jan joined them for a few cups of tea. Steve quickly gathered that Jan and Hank were more friends Tony knew from his years in academia. Judging by the topics of discussion, Jan clearly had a background in biochemistry. She and Tony made sure to include Steve in their conversation whenever possible, though, and Tony soon extracted a promise from her that she and Hank would make an appearance at the science party in Berkeley that evening. Tony seemed stiffer than before though, and the smiles that flashed over his face were brief and brittle. 

Despite an undercurrent of discomfort, though, Tony was clearly glad to be catching up with Jan, Steve thought. He grew less sure of that when Jan said, “It’s nice to see you with someone sweet,” and Tony went rigid all over. 

“We’re not—” Steve started. “We just—” 

Tony smiled tightly. “I’m taking a bit of a break,” he said. “From dating and everything.” 

“Oh!” Jan’s eyes were wide. “Well, Steve, if  _ you’re _ looking to meet anyone, there are going to be tons of incredibly interesting people at Jo and Friday's.” 

“Did you go to Berkeley, too?” Steve asked, somewhat desperately. Fortunately, Jan took the change of subject with grace, and soon she and Tony were talking science once more. 

When the tea and coffee were gone, Tony pulled out his wallet and asked what he owed her. This soon turned into a rapid-fire argument in which Jan insisted he wouldn’t pay a cent for food at her restaurant, while Steve barely got a word in edgewise offering to pay for the meal himself. The fight ended in Jan’s favor, much to Tony’s exaggerated dismay. “You’ll make it up to me the next time up north,” she assured him before heading back inside her restaurant. 

“Do you know everyone in town?” Steve asked as they walked back to the car. 

“Only the best people,” Tony said. “Got anywhere you want to go? We still have a few hours to kill before the party.” 

“I’m open to whatever,” Steve said. 

“Great, there’s this bookstore I want to stop by,” Tony said, making another stomach-turning U-turn. This brought them past a small church complex just across the street from Goliath’s Head, which Steve had noticed while they were sitting. Now, though, he could read the white wooden sign that stood among the collection of crosses standing upright on the lawn. 

_ These Crosses Represent The Number of Homicides in Oakland so Far This Year _ , the sign said. There were too many crosses in the yard to count. 

The image of the crosses stayed with Steve as Tony sped them through the city. Their route took them past faded stucco motels with bright roses blooming through the chain link and wrought iron fences, tent cities packed densely under every overpass, and city trash cans decorated in colorful mosaics. One depicted a raised fist emerging from a rainbow. Beside boarded-up storefronts and empty lots were half-built buildings surrounded by cranes and construction equipment, cinder block businesses with one wall entirely covered in ivy or morning glories, and Victorian and stucco houses in wildly varying states of repair and disrepair. 

Steve was barely surprised when Tony pulled into a parking spot only a few feet from the entrance of the bookstore they were going to—it seemed the only reason Tony didn’t park directly in front was that it was a loading zone. The Sanctum, as it was called, was nestled in a cream-colored stucco building with pine and terra cotta colored trim, between a lingerie shop and a dry cleaner’s. 

Though Steve had never been in this store before—nor, as far as he knew, this part of Oakland—he was flooded with nostalgia when he walked in. Something about the smell of old books and plastic library-style dust jackets, the shelves that went to the ceiling and handwritten section signs, reminded him of his childhood. 

Tony soon disappeared among the shelves, leaving Steve to browse on his own. In the field guides section he met a large, sleepy pit bull mix who, according to his tags, lived at the store. On his way from science fiction to cookbooks an hour or so later, Steve passed by Tony, leaning over a stack of books. He was in hushed conversation with a bald man in a green tunic, and immediately fell silent when Steve approached. 

He smiled, though, and introduced him to the man, Wong, before asking questions about the books Steve was carrying. Soon Steve was showing him a book on native seaweeds of the Pacific Northwest and forgot to wonder why Tony and Wong had stopped talking when they saw him. 

The hours passed quickly, and before he knew it, they were back in the car heading up to Berkeley once more, now laden with armfuls of books. 

 

_________

 

The party was in a craftsman style duplex in the Berkeley hills surrounded by fir trees. Tony had stopped at a high-end grocery store to get a bottle of wine, several packages of sparkling waters in an array of flavors, and six-packs of fancy sodas. It was with armfuls of these bottles and boxes that they mounted the stairs to the front door. On their way, they passed a pair of mailboxes, one shaped like a pickup truck and the other like a sedan.

Their arrival and drinks were both met with enthusiasm. Steve was soon handed a glass of wine and introduced to a lot of people all at once. Friday and Jocasta, the couple hosting the party, were both working at the university and knew Helen and Tony from their academic circles. Steve met people whose names he recognized from scientific journals, including Dr. Hank McCoy, Dr. Jane Foster, and Dr. Amara Perera. The few people he met who didn’t have a  _ Dr. _ in front of their names were grad students who were working to change that fact; over the course of the evening, Steve was regaled with the thesis projects of PHD candidates Doreen Green, Riri Williams, and Nancy Whitehead. 

Though he wasn’t an expert like seemingly everyone else at the party, Steve thought he managed to hold his own, conversationally speaking. He didn’t understand everything that Dr. Perera had to say about biophysics, but he followed well enough to know when to ask questions. The closest he came to being bored was when a Dr. Blake began a monologue comparing the practice of medicine to the trials of Odysseus, but Tony arrived shortly to introduce Steve to still more doctors. Hank and Jan arrived soon after, and Steve and Jan got lost in a conversation about seasonal fruits, catching yeast, and the chemistry behind creating the perfect french fry. When Jan left to get snacks, Steve and Hank managed to talk for some time about ant pheromones without Steve feeling too lost. 

Whoever he was talking to, they were seldom compelling enough to keep Steve’s eyes from drifting to Tony. He was different here, Steve thought. He was always holding a bottle of sparkling water or soda. When the bottles were empty he surreptitiously plucked at the edges or picked at the label, his movements so small Steve wouldn’t have noticed them if he weren’t looking for them. After someone came around collecting empty cups and bottles, he immediately took a cup of water from a nearby table and held it without taking a drink from it, as if just to have something to do with his hands. 

He hardly stopped smiling. It wasn’t that he seemed unhappy, exactly, but the smiles didn’t seem quite real either. He evaded all questions about his personal life as well. When Friday offered him a cocktail, he didn’t mention that he wasn’t drinking, just declined politely, with the consequence that over the course of the evening she and Jocasta and a well-meaning Jan offered him many more alcoholic drinks. 

Still, Steve thought as he watched Tony from across the room, in the midst of an animated conversation with Hank and Helen about artificial intelligences, he seemed to be having an alright time. Steve wished he knew Tony well enough to know for sure, or at least to pull him aside and see how he was doing. 

Near midnight, Steve was sitting in a stiff-backed mission-style wooden chair beside an unlit tiled fireplace, nursing his fourth glass of wine. Jan, who had been his preferred conversational partner for the night, had left over an hour previous. Across from him now was Dr. Foster, sitting in a similar chair—though one that Steve jealously noted had a thin layer of leather padding—and doing her best to keep Dr. Blake from going on too long about any one topic. 

Unfortunately, now she chose the subject of coma recovery.

“We need to reevaluate how we talk to family members and friends about prognosis,” Dr. Foster said. “There’s still so much we can’t predict.” 

“That’s very optimistic,” Dr. Blake replied. “But in real life, if some patient’s mother thinks you don’t know what you’re doing, aren’t doing everything you can to help their loved one, she’ll replace you at the least, sue you at the worst.” 

“But we can’t actually predict how the recovery will go,” she insisted. “There was that college student up north—hypothermia, I think. Everyone who looked at his chart said he’d never wake up.” 

“Actually,” Steve started to say. 

“That just proves my point,” Dr. Blake said. 

“He was in a vegetative state for over four weeks, and—”

“Three,” Steve corrected without thinking. 

“—and the recovery was practically instantaneous, straight from minimal awareness to—”

Dr. Foster’s words were cut off by the loud ringing of Steve’s phone. He’d never been more relieved to have accidentally left the sound on—though he was sure he remembered silencing it before he got out of Tony’s car. 

Without looking at who was calling, Steve said, “So sorry, I have to take this, it’s about a commission,” and darted into the back hall. “Hello?” 

“It’s just me,” said Tony’s voice, both from his phone and from a swivel chair inside an office at the end of the hall. “I couldn’t help but overhear part of your conversation, thought you might like an out.” 

Steve ended the call and walked toward the office to join Tony, a relieved smile on his face. “Thank you. I didn’t realize I was still such a medical oddity.” 

Tony winced. “Yeah, sorry about that.” 

“It’s not your fault,” Steve said. 

“Want some company? Or time on your own?” 

“I wouldn’t mind some company.” 

They stayed in the little office for some time, discussing everything from the Turing test to the William Morris wallpaper decorating the office. When the sounds of the party audibly died down, they returned to the living room to find only a handful of guests still drinking and chatting. Tony brought them smoothly into a discussion of epigenetics with well-timed question for Dr. Perera, and no one commented on their absence. Tony stayed by his side for the rest of the party.  

 

_________

 

At half-past two in the morning, Jocasta was seeing off the last of the guest and Friday was insisting that Steve and Tony stay the rest of the night. 

“No way am I letting you drive all the way back up to Cuarzo at this time of night,” she said. 

Jocasta closed the heavy oak door behind a pair of grad students and came to join them. “Oh good, that’s settled. I’ll make sure the guest room is set up.” With that, she strode up the stairs. 

“I’ll find some extra blankets for you boys,” Friday said, following after her. 

“Guess we’re crashing here,” Tony said with a wry smile. “That okay? I’ll be fine to drive after a cup of coffee, or we can get a hotel—”

“This is fine,” Steve said. “It’s sweet of them to let us stay.” 

The guest room was painted moss-green and had the same wood beams and accents as the rest of the house. The bed, too, was solid wood, with intersecting spindles forming rectangular patterns that mimicked those of the window frames. It was also no bigger than a queen.  

“This gonna be okay?” Tony said. “There are couches, I can go crash in the living room.” 

“No problem,” Steve said, though he noticed when he said it that his mouth had gone dry. 

Steve finished getting ready first and was sitting under the covers texting Clint and Natasha when Tony crawled in beside him, wearing just an undershirt and boxers. The wide neckline hung off his shoulders, and Steve was captivated by his neck and clavicle. His collarbones fanned out like a pair of wings. 

“Nice, huh?” Tony asked. 

For a moment Steve just blinked, sure he’d been caught in his staring. Then he saw that Tony was holding out a round pendant that hung from his neck. He’d thought Steve was noticing his necklace. 

“It was my nonnina’s,” Tony was saying. Steve peered at the necklace. Carved into the circle was a crescent moon with heavy lidded eyes and a flat, serious mouth. Across from it was a single star. 

“It’s beautiful.” 

Tony tucked it back under his shirt. “It’s called a  _ lunula _ . It’s supposed to ward off the  _ malocchio _ , the evil eye _.” _

“How does it do that?” 

Tony shrugged. “Who knows? It’s magic.” He grinned. “That, and silver wards off evil, of course.” 

“Of course,” Steve agreed. 

Tony leaned back onto the pillows and pulled the blankets up around his neck, so Steve turned his attention back to his phone. It was some minutes later—long enough Steve thought Tony might have drifted off to sleep—that he spoke again.  “I think tonight was the first party I’ve been to in over a decade where I didn’t get drunk.” 

“Oh?” Steve said, unsure how to proceed. He was sitting right next to Tony, could so easily reach out a comforting hand—but he’d really only known Tony for a few weeks, and grabbing him while they were laying in a bed was, Steve told himself firmly, far too forward.“What did you think?” 

“I’m still figuring that out,” Tony admitted, steadfastly staring up at the ceiling. “I’ll get back to you on that.” 

He closed his eyes after that and when Steve finished with his phone he clicked off the bedside lamp and settled into the bed himself. 

Falling asleep beside Tony was wonderful, Steve decided. And strange. The last time he’d slept in the same bed as another person, it was Peggy, which was odd to think of, but not bad, exactly. It was comforting having Tony next to him. Whenever their arms or bare legs brushed against each other, he felt Tony’s cool skin. Steve always ran warm but liked feeling the night air when he slept. He thought, as he fell asleep, that Tony was like a sea breeze coming off the ocean.  

 

_________

 

Steve woke up first, to find Tony curled in a small, protective ball on his side of the bed, reminding Steve of a cat. Tony’s hair was adorably mussed, and the sheets and blankets were a tangle around his limbs. Steve wanted to tidy them, tuck him in, but restrained himself. 

Instead, he got up in search of a glass of water and, hopefully, some contact lens solution; he’d been so out of it the night before he’d forgotten to deal with his contacts and slept with them in all night. His eyes felt dry and crusty, a feeling that extended all over the rest of his body. 

He soon found Jocasta in the kitchen, making coffee and scrambled eggs. She plied him with water and directed him to an upstairs bathroom cabinet where he found plenty of contact solution. By the time Tony was up—now back in in his hoodie and sweatpants from the day before—Steve was feeling rejuvenated and hydrated, with his contacts freshened and several glasses of water in him. Tony accepted a mug of coffee but insisted that he had somewhere he wanted to take Steve for breakfast. Once Friday joined them downstairs, Steve and Tony said their goodbyes. 

“Jocasta’s almost as bad a cook as I am,” Tony said as he bustled them to the car. “And I hate being in the Bay and eating a bad meal when there are so many good ones I could be having.” 

He deftly drove them through the traffic circles and one-way streets of the Berkeley hills. Soon the street signs changed from brown to green, with the Oakland oak tree at one edge, letting them know they’d crossed into the other city. Tony parked near an orange stucco building with blue tile along the bottom and led Steve to a boba tea shop. “This is just to load us up on caffeine,” Tony explained, then stepped up to the counter and rattled off a long, complicated drink order involving coffee, lychee, boba, and specific instructions regarding the use of creamer. Steve, feeling a bit overwhelmed, ordered a classic jasmine milk tea with nothing extra. 

Drinks in hand, they walked another block to a chocolate-brown storefront with crowded red bistro tables in front of it. The sign proclaimed it to be a  _ Coffee Roaster, Bakery,  _ and  _ Chocolatier _ . “We got tea before going to a coffee shop?” Steve asked. 

Tony shushed him. “I’ll explain after we eat.” 

Steve raised an eyebrow but complied, following Tony inside to a glass counter full of pastries, cookies, pies, and cakes. A chalkboard sign listed the two hot breakfast specials, a heavily tattooed barista took their orders—a banana coconut flaxseed waffle for Tony and steel cut oats with blueberries, bananas, chia seeds, flaxseeds, and pumpkin seeds for Steve—and directed them to sit anywhere they liked. They squeezed into a small table between one couple with two pomeranians in their lap and another with what looked like a miniature Siberian husky. 

When Tony got up to take their food, the barista now staffing the counter tilted her head quizzically. She had gauged ears and her arms were covered in elaborate full sleeve tattoos of intertwining caterpillars, moths, and leaves. A huge pentacle was tattooed between her collarbones. “Aren’t you that guy?” she asked. 

“Nope,” Tony said with an easy smile. 

“Oh, okay, sorry,” she said, turning back to the register. 

Sharing the meal was another intimacy in a string of them that built up a pocket of warmth in Steve’s chest. Spending hours together in the small space of the car, talking nonstop, sleeping side by side, and now sitting opposite each other at a small table. Each time Steve closed his eyes, the deep blue of Tony’s eyes stayed with him. 

After they ate, Tony filled a box with candies, scones, and danishes. As they left the cafe, Steve asked Tony what his exchange with the barista had been about. 

“Oh, you know, just someone I knew from my Wiccan phase and didn’t want to chat with,” he said breezily. 

“Okay, sure,” Steve said. “So why did we get tea before going to a coffee shop?” 

“Everything there is vegan,” Tony said. “And I need cow’s milk with my caffeine.” 

“But you bought a cream cheese danish,” Steve protested. “The woman in front of us ordered a chicken pot pie.” 

“All vegan,” Tony said. “They just don’t advertise it. I didn’t know until the first time I tried to get real cream with my coffee. That’s Oakland for you.” 

After that they were back on the road. Once again, they seem to have missed out on the usual traffic out of Berkeley and were on the bridge to San Rafael in what felt like no time. 

The drive up was even more comfortable than the drive down had been. Tony mostly kept his eyes on the road as he drove, occasionally turning to send a dazzling smile or lopsided smirk Steve’s way as they chatted. Steve used the opportunity to look, and look, and look, and look his fill. They passed several RVs—Rockwood XL (“That one’s too easy.”) and Montana (“That’s…I can’t do anything with that. It’s unfunny. Anticlimactic.”) were the standouts—before they stopped outside Healdsburg for more gas and coffee. It was only when they were past Laytonville and conversation had yet to dry up that Steve noticed how little he was looking forward to the trip ending. 

 

_________

 

“This was fun. And I got a lot of work done while you were hanging out at my place,” Tony mused when he pulled up in front of Steve’s building. “I think the company does me some good. You want to come by again, say, Tuesday? Bring some of your own work to do if you want, we can make it a thing.” 

It became a thing. Steve started visiting several times a week, bringing his sketchbook and laptop and eventually colored pencils and travel watercolors. Tony would have takeout or a meal prepared by a now-absent chef and they would eat and work and chat. Tony showed him the new phone battery or car engine or robot he was working on, and Steve showed Tony his studies and sketches. 

It was easy to spend time with Tony at his mansion. Steve liked the work he produced there, too. The watercolors he made when he was with Tony seemed more loose and vibrant, the pigment blooming across wet patches of paper just as he envisioned. There was something about being with Tony that suited the medium, the plying of wet paint onto a wet page with a wet brush. Stepping across the threshold of the mansion felt charmed somehow. The forces that had previously made the mansion feel remote and intimidating now made it feel comfortable and easy. It was only when talking about Tony to his friends—Clint and Natasha, usually—that he remembered to feel self-conscious. Tony had so much going on: his inventions and his company, just to begin with. Plus, Steve had a feeling that, despite his protests, Tony had passed Steve’s name along to the editors and art directors of several prominent and well-funded scientific journals. What did Steve have to offer? Just his companionship, really, and it was hard to imagine how he compared after years of living in Manhattan and mingling with CEOs and socialites. 

But Tony kept inviting him back, and while he was there, Steve felt relaxed and at ease, so he kept visiting. 

One day, Steve was working on an anatomical study of a North American badger for a nature magazine, when Tony excitedly pulled him into his sprawling garden. It was raining—as it tended to do in the winter in Cuarzo County—but Tony didn’t seem to notice. The grounds were a verdant mess, bursting with lush greens and plush blooms. Tony led him past a potting shed and a small greenhouse to an old oak tree with wild, gnarled roots. He put a finger to his lips then pointed at a large hole—or no, Steve realized, not just a hole, it was a burrow—dug under one of the thick roots. After a few minutes, a badger stuck its head out, sniffed experimentally, peered at them with glassy eyes, and then retreated back into its den. 

The same thing happened when Steve was working on a still life of hydrangeas a former classmate had commissioned from him. “C’mon, you don’t need those photos they sent, I have some fresh ones out here!” Tony chirped. When Steve had a job involving sand hoppers, they went down to his private beach—once again in the rain—to catch the tiny crustaceans in jars. After they had a few, Tony brought out a set of magnifying glasses and a microscope. “For the details,” he said, shrugging. Another time, they spent hours searching the grounds for a dead mouse. “I swear I saw one of my cats kill one and leave it just—here…” On other days, they collected wooly bear caterpillars, orange day-lilies, horsetails, and Japanese maple leaves. 

It wasn’t long before Steve knew Tony’s gardens better than the layout of his own childhood home. He knew every fern, every stone bench, every archway of jasmine or wisteria. He learned the fastest path to the aloe vera that grew just a few yards from the garage, which he was frequently fetching after Tony would cut himself with a tool or burn himself with his soldering iron. He mapped out different paths through the grounds down to the beach, ones that avoided the smelly ginkgo tree.

His favorite spot was the redwood cathedral, a ring of young trees that had grown in a tight circle around where an older one had long ago died and rotted away. The base and some of the outer layers of wood of the dead tree remained, forming a warm, musty cave over half of the inner circle. Sun passed through the trunks at an odd angle, casting streams of light that spun with gnats making lazy spirals in the air. Standing inside them made reality feel slightly altered, like being inside a fairy ring. 

“That was the spot I liked best when I was a teenager, too,” Tony said when Steve told him how much he loved the redwood cathedral. “I’d sit out there to read, listen to music, come up with inventions, whatever.” 

One ambitious afternoon, Steve put his knowledge of the garden and beach to use by promising Tony a meal made up entirely of food from his own grounds. “But I don’t grow any vegetables,” Tony insisted. “I might have some artichokes, but I think they’re decorative.” 

Steve was sure he’d manage anyway. The salad course was made up of garlic grass, miner’s lettuce, and nasturtium greens and the few nasturtium blossoms he’d been able to find. (The artichokes were not purely decorative, but not in season, either.) It was followed by a small mushroom soup—the rain had let up in the last few days, so there weren’t as many as he’d have liked. The main course was mussels, which Steve had collected by wading out to some of the larger rocks in Tony’s cove at low tide. The craggy cliffs that his mansion sat on formed a U-shape around the private beach, preventing other visitors from reaching it on foot even at the lowest of tides, so there were plenty of mussels of all sizes to choose from. Steve cheated a little by making a salad dressing out of oils and vinegars in Tony’s pantry. 

“The cream sauce for the mussels didn’t come from my garden either,” Tony pointed out. 

“Neither did the butter and garlic I cooked them in,” Steve agreed. 

“Fucking delicious, at least,” Tony said through a mouthful. “That’s not a real dessert, though.” 

It was a fruit salad, made up of blackberries, hawthorn berries, juneberries, and pineapple guavas. “Can’t you just admit that I was right, and I made a whole meal from your garden?” 

Tony scoffed. “Never. So, did you learn all this in art school, then?” he asked. “While you were studying drawing the plants and everything else?” 

“Some of it,” Steve replied. “My mom taught me a lot as a kid. It’s a fun way to be in nature, like a scavenger hunt. Stretches the grocery budget a bit, too,” he added, as an afterthought. 

“Hey, okay, would it be sacrilege to eat your fruit salad over bowls of vanilla ice cream?” 

“That would be acceptable,” Steve said with mock-gravity. 

One rainy evening in mid-December found them at the top of the tower of the Carbonell mansion. The ceiling of the round room opened up into a cone that matched the pointed cap of the tower—an architectural feature that Tony told him, with a chuckle, was called a witch’s cap—and they were using the light of a table lamp to make shadow puppets all over the high walls and up onto the pointed ceilings. The curtains were drawn tight, but the sound of rain against the windows permeated the whole space. Tony arranged Steve’s fingers into the right position to make the shape of a swan taking flight, his skin cool like rushing water against Steve’s hands. Steve watched Tony, his hands, the deft gestures they formed, the way the soft light made his face glow golden. 

He’d found Tony attractive since they’d first met, of course, had wanted to kiss him since that first morning of their road trip. He was handsome in a traditional, classic way, with his own, utterly one-of-a-kind beauty in how he moved, how he smiled, how his eyes crinkled at the corners, how he moved his hands. This was more than that, though. He didn’t just like looking at Tony, didn’t just like imagining what it would be like to touch him; Tony made his life better. That went beyond wanting to kiss him, to run his fingers through Tony’s hair—it was wanting to hold him, keep him. 

Steve wondered if Tony would let him. 


	5. The Ocean

Everything was wet, was liquid, was ocean. He breathed thick salt air. He let his body be rocked by the frigid waves. There was heat, too, or at least something less chilled than the waters of the Pacific. Skin, warm and slippery and smooth. He needed to touch it, to rock into it, for it to touch him back. A hand, callused and sure, held him in place, and he felt the pressure of gentle fingers nudging between the cheeks of his rear. Then he was being breached, everything slick and hot and perfect. That moment of penetration crystalized into pure pleasure, electrifying his body within while the sea lapped at him without. Salt water ran in tracks from Steve's eyes down his cheeks. Not tears, but the ocean. The ocean wept his joy and his bliss. He arched his back and rose up to meet it, and it pushed deeper, deeper, deeper. He rolled his hips and was rolled into in turn. Rugged hands searched over the drenched surface of his body, coated him in touches that were firm and humming and hungry. 

He moaned and panted and breathed the ocean. Not drowning, only inhaling ocean and exhaling joy. The ocean was sweat and ejaculate and lubricant and spit. He leaned in toward the hands and felt lips meet his, wet and sloppy. A tongue slid into his mouth, his own meeting it in reply, and that was the ocean, too. The kiss tasted alkaline. The mouth against his was warm and messy and slick. 

He awoke gasping, tears streaming down his face, his lips swollen and dripping with spit, the sheets of his bed soaked with sweat, his cock throbbing. 

Steve reached down and took his erection in hand and came in an eruption that coated him in thick stripes of white. 

He didn’t think about the dream much as he showered, made himself a breakfast smoothie, and set to work at his drawing table on a watercolor of magnolia, accompanied by a cup of steaming tea and a podcast playing on his phone. 

But the further the day wore on, the more he missed it, that feeling of being soaked, of being penetrated not just in the usual, literal sense of something fucking into him, but also of his skin being penetrated by the water, the comforting feeling of buoyancy that accompanied the overwhelming, liquid wetness of the dream. Without it, he felt strangely barren. He drank more water and tea than usual, trying to re-hydrate himself. There was no rain that day, only a light fog that retreated into a flat gray cloud bank by the afternoon, and he longed for it. 

He texted Clint to ask him if he could borrow Lucky and Clint’s car to go to the beach. He needed to see the ocean again. 


	6. Chapter 3 - Lunula

In February, Natasha started sending Steve articles about Tony. At first they were older ones, mostly business pieces about the tech boom and New York nightlife and society reports about parties he’d attended. Then came newer ones, speculating on why he’d left the east coast and what he was doing in California, featuring interviews from people who met him at a party or business meeting once or twice giving their “insight” on his state of mind.

Steve didn’t recognize the Tony in any of the articles. Not just the ones about the out-of-control rich kid partying; the ones about the suave, savvy businessman were unfamiliar, too. It wasn’t that he didn’t find Tony charming, it was that what Steve found charming about him seemed to be wildly different from what any of the writers or people interviewed did. Steve was awed, yes, by the man in dark, expensive clothes with the brilliant smile, but he was most charmed by the Tony barefoot in his workshop, oil stains on his tank top and all over his hands, getting on his coffee mug, while he talked about his grandmother or taught Steve cat’s cradle.

Tony filled a void in Steve’s life that he hadn’t previously noticed was empty. When Bucky and Peggy had died, he hadn’t looked to replace them or counteract the absences they left behind. First he’d been in too much shock and mourning to do anything, and then it had seemed too soon, and somehow it had led to this holding pattern, spending time with Clint and Nat, visiting the Barneses, researching Peggy’s family, and hardly interacting with anyone else in person. He might not have even noticed how rote and lonely his life had become if Tony hadn’t entered it. Part of him wanted to be wary of how quickly and intensely Tony’s presence filled everything out, but then, Tony had been even more solitary between moving back to Nublado and meeting Steve. They were finding a balance together, Steve figured.

Soon it was March, and Steve considered Tony one of his closest friends. They’d been spending more and more time together, and he’d been noticing that Tony was returning the lingering looks Steve sent his way. Steve thought maybe most friends didn’t touch each other so much, didn’t spend quite this much time together, texting at all hours they were apart, planning meals together, sharing inside jokes like they’d been friends for years rather than months.

It wasn’t just that he wanted to push Tony against a wall and taste his tongue and grind their hips together—or the other way around, he wasn’t picky—but that he thought Tony wanted that, too.

“Do you want to try dating?” Steve finally asked one night. They were out on the back deck of Tony’s mansion. They sat on matching teak chairs with round footrests, overlooking the sea, eating greasy Chinese takeout out of the boxes with flimsy disposable chopsticks. The sky was a pale tangerine color and the fog that rolled off the ocean gleamed golden.

“Each other?” Tony asked around a bite of bok choy, looking uncharacteristically flummoxed. Steve thought, _God, he’s adorable_ , and knew he was falling hard. “You want to date me?”

“Yeah Tony, I want to date you,” Steve said, wondering why the fond, besotted expression on his face wasn’t answer enough.

Tony set his box of stir-fried vegetables on a side table. “I didn’t know you were into” —he waved a hand vaguely, frowning— “that,” he said finally.

“I don’t have what you might call a lot of experience,” Steve said slowly. “But I’m definitely interested.”

“I. It’s not a good idea.”

“Oh,” Steve said. His heart twisted in his ribcage. “Sorry, I—”

“No, god, don’t be sorry.” Tony swiped a hand over his face. “Anyone would be lucky to date you, Steve, seriously. I’m—I’m a mess. Not just because of Ty—though that too—just, generally. You don’t know what you’re asking to get into.”

Steve thought he did, in fact, and that even if he didn’t, he was sure he could handle it. But it was Tony’s decision to make. Out loud, he said, “Okay. Sorry, forget I asked.”

“Stop apologizing, seriously, I’m getting a rash.”

“Okay,” Steve said after a moment, returning to his fried rice and trying to clamp down on the rush of disappointment and embarrassment that continued to flood through him.

They sat quietly for a few minutes, watching Phobos chase a moth across the deck.

Steve sighed. He felt hyper-aware of how close his chair was to Tony’s, of how Tony was bouncing his knee up and down nervously, making the wood of the deck tremble slightly. “It’s weird now, isn’t it? I’m sorry, I thought—”

“It’s fine, Steve,” Tony assured him. “We’re good, seriously.”

“But—”

“Steve. Look at me.” Steve did.  

Tony smiled at him and Steve felt the tension in his shoulders melt away. It was hard to worry about anything with Tony smiling at him like that.

It _would_ be okay. Somehow.

 

_________

 

Steve was sure he’d start seeing less of Tony after that, but he needn’t have worried. Tony seemed determined to pretend that nothing had happened, for the most part. Not in a cruel way. He probably even meant it as a kindness, Steve thought. He texted Steve just as often, invited him over just as frequently, and didn’t even stop making lewd jokes. He did stop touching Steve as much, though, started keeping a step or two away. Sometimes Steve thought Tony would catch him staring, and he’d catch a mournful expression on Tony’s face before he glanced away—or maybe it was pitying. Steve didn’t want to know, and resolved never to ask.

So Tony wasn’t interested in him that way after all. Tony had probably had lots of practice with navigating friendships with people who were attracted to him, what with being gorgeous and smart and funny and rich. He was handling his end of it gracefully, and Steve would just have to do his best to emulate him. He’d figure it out eventually, maybe even stop wanting Tony entirely. And they could be just friends, like Tony wanted.

In mid-March, the rain began to let up. The climbing bourbon roses that snarled through the chain-link fence around Steve’s building, competing with the blackberries and ivy, were blooming as bright and red as if the Queen of Hearts had just commanded Alice to apply a fresh coat of paint. Steve had plans to go over to Tony’s that afternoon, and was working on finishing up a commission before he had to leave, trying not to think about how much more he was looking forward to it than he did his plans with Clint and Natasha.

His phone buzzed and he opened it to a flurry of texts from Tony. He smiled to himself, picturing Tony in one of his workshops, surrounded by screens and holograms that moved and shone as bright as he did, sprinting from project to project and spinning projections and tools in his hands as he narrated the words to his phone.

 

 **Tony** : _so sorry but I have to cancel on hanging today_  
**Tony** : _there was this R &D emergency _  
**Tony** : _aaaand I may have stayed up for 72 hours straight to fix it_  
**Tony** : _I just got up from trying to sleep it off and I have the most disgusting cold_  
**Tony** : _the only reason the speech to text program isn’t including my new lisp and the constant hacking is because I programmed it to edit those things out_  
**Tony** : _talking hurts my throat_  
**Tony** : _which I’m *trying* not to take as some kind of karmic commentary on my conversational tendencies_ _  
_ **Tony** : _anyway sorry to bail last minute_

 

Probably not sprinting around the workshop, then.

 

 **Steve** : _are you okay?_

 **Tony** : _peachy_  
**Tony** : _just exuding mucus, is all_ _  
_ **Tony** : _gonna take it easy for a bit and I’ll be fine_

 **Steve** : _y’know_ _  
_ **Steve** : _I haven’t had a runny nose or a fever in over a decade_

 **Tony** : _Steven Rogers if you come over here and get sick, so help me_

 **Steve** : _promise I won’t get sick_  
**Steve** : _cross my heart_ _  
_ **Steve** : _now stop talking, you’re hurting your throat_

 

Not bothering to check Tony’s response, Steve tidied his paints, rinsed out his paint water, quickly packed his bag, and set out the door. Tony did so much for him, letting him spend time at his mansion, giving him prototypes for electronic styluses, giving his name to editors and art directors. And of course just being himself, clever and teasing and overwhelming in a way that made Steve feel warm and wonderful all over. Now Steve had something he could do for Tony in return.

It was a short walk to High Tides and quick work to borrow Clint’s car, even with the caveat that he didn’t know when he would return it—Clint’s coworker Cypress lived in the same rural neighborhood as Clint and would give him a ride home. Steve made stops at the the grocery co-op, the local butcher, and then a pharmacy. Steve knew he probably seemed strange, hustling though the familiar aisles of the co-op, ducking into the bulk aisle because he didn't have time to catch up with Mrs. Albero, only exchanging a few words with Sofie at the checkout stand instead of having their usual chat about how Lucky was doing. At the butcher shop, Diego raised his eyebrows at Steve’s order—he didn’t usually spend so much money on meat—but didn’t say anything. Steve wondered if the gossip mill in town had caught wind of all the time he’d been spending with Tony. Finally, he headed to the Carbonell mansion.

Tony opened the door wearing black sweatpants and a cardinal-red MIT sweatshirt with balled-up tissues sticking out of the pockets. He wrinkled his nose in annoyance. “You’re going to get sick,” he complained hoarsely.

“Nope,” Steve said, bustling in with his bags of supplies. “Close the door, you’re letting the draft in.”

Tony did so and followed him to the kitchen, crossing his arms and shuffling his socked feet across the marble floor.

Steve set his armful of bags down on the long, wooden butcher block that dominated the center of the kitchen. A cat he thought might be Hygiea stood smack in the middle of the surface, cleaning a front paw with her tongue. Beside her was a huge round vase containing a collection of dark, gnarled branches. The vase was nearly spherical and made of opalescent ceramic so polished and white that it seemed to glow a little. Briefly, Steve imagined it full of the stems of bourbon roses from outside his building instead, that he’d arrived at Tony’s home with a bundle of flowers in his arms.

The way the vase reflected the light made Steve think about the lighting in the room. When he was sick, he’d hated harsh light, especially the buzzing fluorescent ones that dominated doctor’s offices and waiting rooms. Tony’s mansion, of course, didn’t have anything as awful as commercial fluorescent lighting, but that didn’t mean it was suited to a sick person. The fixtures in the kitchen were glass pendant lamps, and while they gave off a lovely yellow glow, they still struck Steve as too bright. After trying them and walking around the kitchen once, he kept them off, letting the waning, rain-soaked light through the French windows illuminate the kitchen instead.

Tony watched him try the lights, turn an oven on to preheat, and fill a large stock pot and a tea kettle with water in the porcelain farmhouse style sink. “Seriously, I feel gross,” Tony said, the raspiness of his voice lending it a husky depth that reminded Steve of all the more pleasant things a person might do to end up with a low, hoarse voice. “You don’t want to catch this. Also I’m pretty sure I get grumpy and even more annoying than usual when I’m sick.”

“Yeah, being sick sucks,” Steve said agreeably. “I’d get grumpy if I had to deal with it alone, too.”

Tony just scowled at him.

“Sit down,” Steve insisted. Tony plopped down on a stool, still looking sullen. “You stay right there. I’ll get you some things, okay.”

Without waiting for a reply, Steve headed to the office on the first floor, the closest place he knew he could find a blanket. He returned with a wool throw, which he swaddled around Tony. Tony rolled his eyes, but his lips were quirking up in a small smile. He looked adorable like that, puffy face and all, and Steve couldn’t stop himself from grinning fondly.

Steve set to work then. He pulled mint leaves off of the branches he’d bought and tossed them in the now simmering pot of water, giving the mixture a brief stir. It really had been over a decade since he’d been sick, with the flu or a cold or anything worse than a tension headache, but he remembered how unpleasant and muffled everything was when he had a runny nose. The steam from the water would hopefully open up Tony’s sinuses a bit, while the smell of the mint should cut through even his clogged nose. It was always nice having a pleasant smell, and when one or more of his senses was giving Steve a hard time he liked to be able to give at least one other a pleasant treat.

Soon the tea water boiled. Steve retrieved a tall ceramic mug and a strainer basket for loose leaf tea and set to preparing the tea. Seeing Tony peering at it curiously, he said, “It’s rose hips, grated ginger, and a little bit of cinnamon bark chips. I make it for the taste, but it’s full of vitamin C. Good for your immune system.” When the water was the right color, he set the mug on the butcher block in front of Tony with a jar of raw honey and one of his homemade elderberry syrup. “Antioxidants and phytonutrients,” he added, pointing at the jars. “They should help soothe your throat, too.”

“If you never get sick,” Tony began, watching golden honey slowly drip from the jar into his mug, “How do you know all this?”

“I like knowing about food,” Steve said. “And maybe I don’t get sick because I eat healthy and take care of my immune system and don’t stay up for 72 hours hours at a time.”

“Well, that sounds boring.”

“Here, take some of these.” Steve poured the contents of the pharmacy bag onto a clear spot on the butcher block.

“What, did you buy out the entire cold and flu aisle?” Tony asked, picking up a bottle of cherry-red cough syrup and reading the ingredients list. Steve had already checked to make sure nothing he bought contained alcohol, just in case, but he didn’t blame Tony for checking.

“I wasn’t sure what all of your symptoms were,” Steve said primly. “Or what you might already have on hand. But you should at least take some ibuprofen and something for your throat. Have you eaten since you woke up?”

“There was a lot of cream in my coffee,” Tony mumbled.

“Uh- _huh_ ,” Steve said, unimpressed. He separated the medicines into two piles. “Don’t take any of these” —he indicated one pile— “until you’ve eaten. Do you like biscuits and gravy? I have a backup if not.”

“I’ll eat anything you cook,” Tony said into his mug. “This shit tastes like a Shakespeare garden.” He set it down, looking apologetic. “I mean, not in a bad way.”

Steve just laughed. “As long as you drink it, I’m not bothered. Anyway I have biscotti for you for now.”

Tony perked up at that, his eyes lit up and stealing Steve’s breath away. “Gimme!”

Steve dug the biscotti out of a canvas grocery bag with a chuckle. “Eat at least a whole one before you take anything, okay?”

“Okay _Mom_ ,” Tony said, already tearing open the package with gusto.

Steve set a pan sizzling with hot oil. He tossed a few sprigs of rosemary in, watched them until the flavor had saturated the oil and the scent had mingled with that of the boiling mint leaves, and then fished them out and set them aside. After setting some crumbled sausage in the pan to brown, he began pulling out ingredients for the biscuits. He’d left some flour and baking powder in Tony’s kitchen from the last time he’d baked there, a fact which he decided not to examine too closely. Lots of people came over to their friends’ places several times a week to bake and cook for them, probably. He just liked taking care of Tony, that was all. It was a good thing.

Steve liked nice ingredients, but couldn’t usually justify buying the really nice stuff. For Tony though, he’d splurged on some imported cultured butter from Europe, the full-fat organic buttermilk from the free-roaming grass-fed well-exercised animal-welfare-group-approved cows, and the best pork sausage the Diego had had on hand. He noticed Tony watching him as he cut the flour into the chunks of cold butter, an intense gaze that was intoxicating and welcome at the same time as it was disarming and disorienting.

“What?” he asked, ducking his head and clutching the big stainless steel bowl harder.

“Thanks for coming over,” Tony said, turning back to his tea and biscotti. “It’s really nice having company.” He poured some pills into his palm and downed them dry.

“Of course,” Steve said. He was feeling strangely on edge, like his skin was over-sensitized, and could feel Tony’s eyes on him, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling whenever Tony looked away, a shiver shooting down his spine when the gaze returned.

Soon the batter for the biscuits was ready, and he was dropping globs of it onto a cookie sheet. Once they were in the oven, he returned to the gravy. After setting the cooked sausage aside, he started toasting some flour and assembling the rest of the ingredients.

“What’s in the jar?” Tony asked, indicating the big mason jar Steve had just taken from one of his grocery bags.

“It’s chicken stock,” Steve said. “I brought you a jar of bone broth, too, so you have something healthy to eat when I’m not here.” He’d noticed Tony’s tendency to eat whatever was on hand—which sometimes was fresh fruits and berries or leftovers from gourmet restaurants, but just as often was junky corn chips and sour candies. He loved the way Tony became engrossed in projects, the way he talked about whatever new design he was fixated on, but sometimes it had consequences that weren’t ideal. “You can just heat it up in the microwave and drink it like tea.” He kept his kitchen scraps organized in his freezer—various vegetable bits that could go in any broth, beef bones for bone broth, chicken gizzards and bones for chicken broth, mushroom caps for mushroom broth. When he had enough piled up he’d make stock to have on hand.

“I’m surprised you’re not feeding me chicken noodle soup,” Tony said.

“Unoriginal,” Steve scoffed. Their eyes met for a moment as they shared a smile, before Tony glanced away, picking at the sleeve of his hoodie, and Steve returned his attention to the gravy, biting his lip. He chopped fresh sage and a few small leaves of thyme and added them to the gravy to stew.

Before long the food was done. Steve located a tureen and filled it with gravy, dished some biscuits onto a plate, and drizzled them with thin stripes of gravy. Tony could always add more if he wanted. Then he tugged the leaves of rosemary off their woody branches, gave them a rough chop, and sprinkled them over the biscuits for a garnish. “Eat up,” Steve said, placing the plate in front of Tony.

Tony dug in heartily. He was a few bites in when he looked up to see Steve peeling a head of garlic. “What, you think I’ve got a bottomless pit for a stomach, like you?”

“This is for later,” Steve said. “I’m making you a big pot of potato leek soup. You can keep it on the stove and just keep reheating it when I’m not here to feed you.”

“I do like garlic,” Tony said, though he sounded a bit skeptical, or maybe confused.

“It’ll be very garlicky,” Steve assured him. “You have to stay well-fed.”

“No worries about that with you around,” Tony agreed. “This is amazing by the way. I admit I’m probably not appreciating the full range of flavors at the moment, but it’s very cozy.”

“Good,” Steve said, feeling pleased.

“You do this a lot? Tending to your sick friends?”

“I like it,” Steve said. “I like feeling helpful.”

“Yeah, because usually you’re so useless,” Tony said, sounding fond. “I think the closest I’ve gotten is the time I hung out with my friend from college after he had to get his tonsils removed.”

“What was that like?” Steve had his peeled collection of garlic cloves spread out on the block and began slicing them with one of Tony’s big kitchen knives, a French chef blade with a stained walnut-handle. Tony had a huge food processor, of course, a gleaming industrial thing that matched the stand mixer, juicer, blender, and massive espresso machine that lined the white countertops. But Steve preferred to do it by hand. He reflected, as he minced the cloves, that he was pretty sure all of those except the espresso machine—and maybe the blender—had been untouched.  

“Very easy. We just ate ice cream and watched 80’s movies. Nothing as elaborate as all this.”

“Do you have any home remedies you like to do when you’re sick?” Steve asked.

“Hmm.” Tony set down his fork for a moment to consider this. “My mom cooked with a lot of sage when I was sick. Not unlike your gravy.”

“Sage has anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties,” Steve supplied without thinking. He winced inwardly; if he knew that, Tony definitely did.

Tony just nodded. “I got a lot of ear infections when I was little, and Nonnina would take half an onion, pour hot water over it until was warm, and then hold the onion over my ear.”

“An onion? Wouldn’t garlic be more on brand?”

Tony grinned. “Probably. Actually that _is_ something my mom always made me do when I had a cold, chewing raw garlic. Releases the allicin, which is the antibacterial goodness, same as the onion. Can’t say that was my favorite.”

Steve smiled back. He was onto chopping the potatoes, now. “I usually prefer cooked garlic, myself.”

“Anyway, I can’t think of anything else for colds or flus.” He frowned. “Oh, actually.” His mouth twisted. “Except another one my grandma did. She’d heat up some wine for me with some cinnamon and give it to me in a little sherry glass. That’s based in science, too,” he added, with forced cheer. “The resveratrol in red wine helps with inflammation.”

“Well, good thing we have anti-inflammatory pills instead,” Steve said firmly.

“Yeah,” Tony agreed, though he sounded subdued. Steve yearned to see him smile again, to see some of his usual energy return to him. Even sick and tired as he was, he’d seemed more vital, more present than he did now that the subject of alcohol had come up.

Soon Tony had eaten his fill and the soup was simmering on the stovetop. “Okay,” Steve said. “When I was sick I liked to take baths. Get nice and warm, open up my sinuses with all that steam. I bet you have the fanciest bathtub money can buy.” For a moment, he let himself enjoy the image of Tony enjoying such a bath, his nude body languid in the hot water, jacuzzi jets shooting over his flushed skin, reaching all the nooks and crevices that Steve would never get to touch for himself.

“Sure do,” Tony said, adjusting the blanket around his shoulders. “But no can do.”

Steve frowned. “What? Why not?”

“It’s not a good idea to take a bath when you’re sick,” Tony said matter-of-factly.

“I’ve never heard that before,” Steve said. “I don’t think that’s true,” he went on. “What study is that from?”

“The study of Italian superstition.”

Steve groaned. “Really? That again? You’re a scientist.”

“I’m an engineer,” Tony corrected, like that excused anything.

“How about a shower?” Steve tried.

But Tony was shaking his head. “Going out with wet hair is no good either. C’mon, are you really gonna contradict my Nonna Ellie?”

Steve didn’t think Tony should exactly be going _out_ any time soon but didn’t say so. Instead he followed Tony’s direction to the master bath—fitted out, much as Steve had imagined, with a nearly pool-sized bathtub sunken into the floor and decorated with small, patterned tiles—and searched the cabinets and linen cabinets until he found what he was looking for.

When he returned, triumphant, with a fire-engine-red shower cap, Tony burst out laughing but agreed to take a shower. Once Steve had made sure he had everything he’d need and then bustled him off to the bathroom, he set to preparing Tony’s favorite living room. It was on the smaller side, nestled as it was in space of the rounded tower that took up one corner of the building. A window seat filled out one half of the room, curving along the inside of the tower. It was cold so close to the rain-spattered windows, though, and the afternoon sun was already fading behind the thickening clouds and the imminent horizon. So he closed the curtains against the chill and turned his attention to the couch in the room instead.

There was already a laptop on one corner of the plush, charcoal gray couch—currently being used by Cygnus as a pillow for a late afternoon nap—and a tablet on the closest side table, so Steve didn’t need to worry about finding something to keep Tony busy. There were usually devices of one kind or another scattered in every room of the mansion; he imagined this was done intentionally so that Tony never needed to make any effort to find one when he had an idea.

Thinking of the lighting again, he climbed back up to the third floor and found the hall closet that Tony kept stocked, for some reason, with a staggering collection of candles. Steve had seen it once when he’d gone upstairs to fetch Tony a sweater. It was hard to forget. There were pillar candles, taper candles, and tea lights, some in beeswax and some in paraffin, mostly white but peppered with reds, blacks, and yellows as well. He hadn’t ever seen Tony bring any out, let alone keep any lit, was the thing, and hadn’t even noticed any candelabras around in the many china cabinets. Well, Tony had them, at any rate, so Steve filled his arms with as many as he could carry and soon was arranging them over every surface in the corner living room.

When Tony emerged from his shower, the ridiculous shower cap still on his head, his skin flushed from the hot water, wearing the cream-colored bathrobe Steve had set out for him, Steve’s breath caught and he stood, slightly stunned for a moment.

Tony, misunderstanding Steve’s attention, stuck a ridiculous pose and fluttered his eyelashes dramatically. His silver pendant bounced against the hollow between his clavicle. “What do you think? Gonna start a fashion of wearing bright red plastic?”

Steve swallowed and returned his attention to the candles he was lighting. “Definitely,” he said.

Tony grinned. He plucked the cap from his head and tossed it to the side. “You summoning Cthulhu?”

Steve felt self-conscious once more. He ducked his head, rubbing his neck with one hand. Now that Tony was in here, wearing nothing but a terry cloth robe—the tie of which, Steve couldn’t help noticing, was coming undone around Tony’s waist—all the candles looked, well. Kind of romantic. “I just like soft light when I’m sick.”

“I thought that never happened,” Tony teased, shooing Cygnus off the laptop and settling down on one edge of the couch with it in his lap. He leaned back with a satisfied sigh, opened the computer, and rested his feet on a nearby ottoman.

“Not lately,” Steve agreed, relieved they weren’t going to dwell on the topic of the candlelit scene before them. “But I remember what it was like.”

Steve joined Tony on the couch and took out his drawing pad to sketch. His embarrassment soon gave way to the warm sense of ease he got in Tony’s company. Cygnus had moved to curl up in a tight ball in the middle of the oriental rug, and became the subject of several of Steve’s studies. He was approached by a tortoiseshell cat Steve didn’t recognize, who simply flopped on top of Cygnus as if he were a pillow.

“Have I met this cat before?” Steve asked, indicating the newcomer.

“That’s Vesta,” Tony said, stretching and rolling his neck. Steve heard several joints pop.

“Do you want a massage?” It was only once the words were out of his mouth that Steve realized it might be crossing a line.

Fortunately, Tony just said, “Oh wow yes, are you for real? I am so stiff, I feel like one giant knot.”

Steve settled Tony on the low ottoman where he’d been resting his feet, then bent over him and worked on his shoulders and back. He tried not to think about how he was touching Tony, how his hands were pressing into Tony’s muscles and flesh and making Tony gust out small, contented sighs and low moans. Steve gave Clint and Natasha massages all the time, even foot rubs, and that wasn’t weird. So why should this be weird? It wasn’t, he thought decisively.

Steve ran his hands over Tony’s shoulders, smoothing them out, pushing and pulling the muscles until they were level. He worked his way down, kneading around Tony’s shoulder blades, unclenching the tightness around his spine. Tony became increasingly pliant under his hands, leaning into his touch.  

Then Steve undid a stubborn knot in Tony’s lower back and Tony moaned. It was definitely a moan, low and fervent, as open and loose as Tony’s relaxed body, and Steve knew this was completely different from giving Clint or Natasha a massage.

He finished as quickly as he could, then left Tony on his own while he headed back downstairs to make dinner. He caught his breath while he prepared the food. He sautéed a mess of greens—arugula, collards, kale, and spinach—in olive oil with toasted walnuts, pickled onion, and lots of garlic. With Tony’s health in mind, he barely cooked the garlic, just enough to take the bite off. It was accompanied by baked yams and a chunk of bread from Tony’s favorite local bakery.

Tony hadn’t noticed anything, hadn’t thought Steve had been offering just as an excuse to touch him. It was only weird for Steve because he wanted it to lead to something more. Tony, he told himself as he returned to the living room with the food, was fine with it. He’d found a breakfast tray tucked away in the drawer of one of the china cabinets and set it out over Tony’s lap with his plate of food and another mug of tea.  

After a quiet dinner together, listening to the rain pattering against the windows, Steve turned his attention to the master bedroom. It wasn’t late yet, but Tony’s sleep schedule was always off-kilter, and Steve decided it wouldn’t hurt for him to spend the rest of the evening in bed, even if I didn’t sleep.

He began second-guessing his plans to situate Tony in his bed once he saw it. It was huge and beautiful and a gleaming, polished gold. The four-poster was the focal point of the room, an otherwise minimally decorated space with dark, broad wooden floorboards. The only other furniture in the room was a single nightstand and a tufted armchair that stood by the massive fireplace that took up a third of one wall. As large as the room was, and as much as the ornate moldings and carved ceiling medallions filled out the space, the bed dominated it. It was so big, the frame had to have been custom made, as well as the mattress.

Steve pursed his lips and tried not to think about why Tony’s bed was the size of Steve’s entire childhood bedroom. Tony was only an inch or two shorter than Steve, and a person of his size could easily stretch out on a regular king-sized bed and still have room to spare; there were only a few things Steve’s brain could conjure that required such a massive metal bed frame. As much as he tried to dismiss them, the images wouldn’t go away. Instead, they became more elaborate. It was easy to picture someone’s limbs being tied, one to each corner of the bed, the cords of rope stretching long and taut. Or, Steve’s mind supplied, not rope, but gold chains that matched the metal of the frame. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to see the shining metal around Tony’s wrists or his own. He didn’t have to choose, because his imagination was supplying plenty of images of both: Tony bent over him, his hands everywhere, smiling wickedly while Steve twisted against the restraints; Tony spread out underneath him, talking back and grinning ear to ear as he pretended to try to wrestle Steve away; Tony riding him while Steve tugged against the chains from every direction, the posts of the bed straining against his pull; Tony’s energy curbed by the gold bands on his elegant wrists, his body bare and open to Steve’s touch.

He shook himself and turned his focus back to his task. There was already a nice pile of wood by the fireplace. Steve checked his phone to confirm what he had already assumed: it wasn’t a “spare the air” day, since with all the rain, most of the smoke and pollutants had been cleared and there was little fire hazard. He had a sizzling fire going and was laying out extra blankets on the bed when Tony appeared.

“I see you’re preparing my bed for a trip to the arctic.”

“You can always kick them off if it’s too much,” Steve said, feeling a little sheepish now.

“No, no, I like it,” Tony said quickly. “I like having a lot of blankets on me, it’s cozy. Feels safe.”

As if to demonstrate, Tony flopped onto the bed, his weight sending several pillows bouncing off the mattress. There were, Steve noted, a really excessive number of pillows on the bed. They took up nearly a third of the length of the whole thing, which, given its size, was impressive. He wondered if Tony slept on them, like a dragon curled on its hoard, or if he had to take them off the bed one by one before he fell asleep.

“Mmf,” Tony said into the blankets. “I’m tired.”

Steve chuckled. “You should sleep.”

Tony heaved himself upright, looking disoriented, like the movement had made him dizzy. “Yeah, okay. Thanks for everything, Steve.”

That sounded like a dismissal. Well, what else was there for him to do, after all? “Of course,” Steve said, suddenly feeling a little lost. “Glad I could help.”

Tony was already moving the covers aside and climbing under them. “Good night, Steve.”

“Good night, Tony,” Steve said, and headed for the door. He tried to hold onto how good it had felt to take care of Tony, to make sure he was fed and rested, and not to dwell on the fact that he now had to go home to his own bed, much smaller and utterly empty.

 

_________

 

One evening near the beginning of April, Steve showed up at Tony’s door with a gallon-sized basket of elderberries he’d collected and the ingredients to turn them into a pie.

It ended up being the night of their first kiss.

They were sitting side by side in an ornate gazebo in Tony’s gardens, listening to the soft rain as it pattered against the oxidized copper roof. The air smelled briny and ripe, and the stone paths that meandered over the grounds were coated in bruised flower petals. Tony was chatting animatedly about something, and Steve was lost in the sound of his voice, thinking about what a terrible job he’d been doing of keeping a lid on his feelings. He leaned into Tony’s space without meaning to, their shoulders brushing, and Steve felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand deliciously on end. Tony had trailed off from whatever he’d been saying and seemed to be staring at Steve’s lips. His eyes gleamed, and Steve bent toward him.

Their mouths came together, warm and wet as the spring rain falling just beyond the metal columns of the gazebo. Steve threaded a hand through Tony’s damp hair, finding it sprinkled with raindrops from walking through the garden. The wetter sections curled, beads of water forming at the ends, like dew on a spiraling tendril of grapevine. A small groan escaped Tony’s mouth and he pressed himself closer against Steve, taking Steve’s free hand in his own.

Touching Tony was like dipping a hand into the ocean on a sunny day, feeling the sun-kissed water encompass his skin, letting the current tug at him and play against his fingers. He could never expect to know the ocean in its entirety, to understand it, to see and comprehend every droplet and denizen that comprised it, but he could watch it churn and change and see a glimpse of its nature. Tony’s mouth was soft and yielding and offered just the barest hint of the breath and thoughts that lay beyond.

Now that Steve’s body was pressed against Tony’s, he didn’t think he could bear to take it away.

Steve didn’t have some sort of grand illusion that he possessed ancestral memory of living underwater, but the knowledge that all life came from the sea had always seemed to him inherently true and right, like he could step off the sandbar of the beach and walk into the water and somehow find his way home. He had that same feeling of rightness and familiarity now, easing his muscles and clearing his cluttered thoughts. Kissing Tony, he knew immediately, was good for him.

Then Tony pulled back, his eyes squeezed shut. “Shit,” he said. “Fuck Steve, why did you have to be such a good kisser?”

Reality returned to Steve like being hit by a tidal wave. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Takes two to tango, et cetera.” Tony shook his head. He took his hand from Steve’s leaving it feeling cold. “I wish I could, Steve, god, I do. But it’s better this way. I can’t. I just—I can’t.”

“You don’t owe me an explanation,” Steve said. “You never have to explain yourself to me.”

“I know.” Tony’s voice sounded sad, heavy, not at all how Steve wanted it to sound after he’d just thoroughly kissed him, after a moment so wondrous and perfect for Steve. “Let’s go inside,” Tony said, getting to his feet. “We still have pie to eat, and I want to show you the new designs for the flash drives I’m working on.”

Steve followed Tony inside. He didn’t want to forget the taste of Tony on his tongue. But he didn’t know how he could stand to be the same room as Tony if he kept remembering it.

 

_________

 

A week later, Steve said, “Would you come to my apartment for dinner some night?”

They were sprawled together in one of Tony’s living rooms, on a wide, plush sofa upholstered in heavy gray felt. Tony set the tablet he was reading in his lap and twisted around to look at Steve. In the nearly five months of their friendship—other than the road trip and the occasional errand in one of Tony’s cars—they had only ever spent time together at Tony’s mansion. He knew that Tony still had everything he needed delivered, and what little of his business he couldn’t bring in person to his home, he conducted over video conferences or email. Steve got the impression that since he’d returned to Nublado, Tony didn’t really leave his mansion, other than those few, brief errands and his own gardens and private beach. The major exception, of course, were his visits to Keyhole Beach every full moon.

They had never addressed it directly, before. For a moment, Steve wanted to take it back. The sound of blood rushing in his ears competed with the crashing of waves outside the window. But Tony smiled and said, “Yeah, okay,” and Steve felt something uncurl in his chest like a dahlia opening in bloom.

“I’ll make dinner,” Steve said, sounding more calm than he felt.

Tony’s eyes grazed over Steve’s face, searching for the answer to an unspoken question. His eyes were big and inquisitive, reminding Steve of Lucky’s when the dog tilted his head and tried to make sense of human speech. “I can’t wait,” Tony said at last, and smiled.

 

_________

 

Steve didn’t know what he’d been thinking, inviting Tony over to his place. Well, he knew some of it. He’d been thinking about having a chance to make dinner for Tony, to have something of his own to offer after all of the wonderful things Tony had done for him in the last few months. What he hadn’t been thinking about is how it would compare.

Technically speaking they both lived in Victorians, but that’s where any similarity ended. Tony’s

was a sprawling Queen Anne mansion with towers, turrets, and curved balconies, while Steve’s was a blocky folk style cube, little more than a farmhouse dressed up in slightly fancier trim. And these days, the trim sagged off the facade, along with the latest layer of paint, all of it stripped away and beaten down by the salt air. The building had once been intended as a single, respectable-sized house, but it had long since been split up into four little apartments. Steve’s was on the top floor and had a bit of what was once an attic, plus the claw foot tub original to the building and the big, southern-facing windows that attracted him to it in the first place. Beyond that it had little to offer: dull, beige wall-to-wall carpets; dented and cracked walls viscous and sticky with how many times they’d been painted over; his hodgepodge of flea market and thrift store furniture.

And the meal. Steve looked down at the counter. All he’d managed to do so far was chop an onion, but it was just as well because found himself beginning to re-think his entire menu. He pinched the bridge of his nose and glanced at his phone. Nope, it was too late to make anything else now, way too late to find any other ingredients. Oh well. At least Tony was too polite of a person to laugh at him to his face.

No, that wasn’t fair. Steve had cooked for Tony before, at the mansion. He’d even used foraged ingredients before, after all. Tony had claimed to like Steve’s cooking, and Steve took him at his word. It was just Steve’s apartment that made the food feel shabby in comparison, then.

That, and the comparison to the last dinner Tony had treated him to. Tony had hired a chef to come and prepare tagliatelle al tartufo and delicate almond cookies from scratch. He’d gotten his hands on a growler of Pliny the Elder, Steve’s favorite IPA, and they’d carried everything down to Tony’s private beach to dine under the waxing moon and the susurration of the Pacific. As far as Steve knew, Pliny the Elder was only available at retail stores in bottled form, and he’d never seen it sold in Cuarzo County. He’d only ever found it at certain bars and liquor stores in the Bay Area and Sonoma County. Tony would have had to get a growler directly from the brewery. And since he didn’t drink, he’d done it just for Steve.

The soup was on a steady simmer, the artichokes were on their way to cooked, and his arms were full of unbaked bread on its way to the oven when he heard the knock at the door. “Just a minute!” Steve called, balancing on one foot to pull the oven door open with other foot. He slid the loaf inside, checked the rack thermometer, and carefully closed the oven again, standing to brush flour off his hands on his jeans.

Steve opened the door to find Tony leaning against the railing of the landing, holding a cream-colored cat in his arms. The cat’s eyes were shut, lazily, as Tony carefully scratched behind its ears, a fond smile on his face. Steve found himself feeling envious of a cat. “This your cat?” Tony asked, turning a full-watt smile Steve’s way.

“No pets,” Steve said dumbly, still staring at Tony. Over his usual black slacks and button-down was a long, gray felted coat with raw edges, the hood up over his head. On Tony, it didn’t look like a hoodie, or anything else so casual—it looked old-fashioned, like a cowl. The shade was only a touch lighter than the stormy gray of the overcast sky, making him look like he had descended from the clouds in a sunbeam. “Must be a neighbor’s,” Steve added as the cat, finally noticing the lack of petting, opened its eyes to shoot a glare at him, then wriggled out of Tony’s arms, leapt to the floor, and sauntered down the stairs.

Tony chuckled after it. Steve shook himself and stepped out of the doorway. “Sorry, come on in! Uh. Thanks for coming.”

“Smells good,” Tony said, stepping in and letting Steve take his coat. Steve couldn’t see a single cat hair anywhere on it—rich people’s clothes must have some sort of lint-repelling powers he didn’t know about, he figured. The felt glistened instead with raindrops, making his hands damp as he hung it on a hook by the door. The front door opened straight into Steve’s narrow little kitchen, and Steve winced, suddenly feeling acutely aware of how long it had been since he’d scrubbed the floor properly.

Nothing for it now, he reminded himself, leading Tony into his living room. There was just the loveseat and a small round table with the pair of mismatched chairs that he used when he had guests over for dinner—which, now that he thought of it, wasn’t very often—but before he could apologize or say anything about the crowded space, Tony was lounging on the loveseat, saying something about pampas grass and native plants and wildfires, patting the spot next to him as Steve stood, frozen, trying to decide where to situate himself.

Steve took a fortifying breath and sat beside him. Somehow he managed to speak—something about fire safety and rockslides and highway closures, maybe—and they settled into conversation. It was comfortable, once they got going, and he found he liked seeing Tony there: the black of his clothes severe against the crumbling teal velvet of the upholstery; the relaxed, twinkling movement of his eyes as he expounded on whatever topic he’d reached now; the way he spoke with his hands, like the conductor of an unseen orchestra. It seemed right, for a moment—a moment where Tony didn’t seem larger-than-life and too big for Steve’s little living room, his little life.

Then Tony asked for a corkscrew and Steve saw the label on the wine he’d brought. It was from a Carbonell vineyard. Of course it was. Tony had brought a bottle of wine from one of the biggest wineries in the county, in the state probably, a winery he _owned_ . Steve was reminded in a rush that Tony was a billionaire, a man who was only in this small town that was Steve’s whole world because of the sudden death of his last boyfriend—and Steve had invited him to his little walk-up for soup and bread. What had he been _thinking_?

“Ah, or, you don’t have to have wine, that’s fine—” Tony’s voice brought him back to himself. “Steve, are you okay?” He felt Tony’s hand on his. His skin was smooth and just slightly cool, like the surface of a stone polished by years of water and current. Steve closed his eyes and took a long breath in through his nose. “Hey,” Tony was speaking quietly now, like he was talking to a spooked animal. Maybe he was. “Steve. It’s just me.”

Steve snapped his eyes up to Tony’s. “But you’re—” he broke off, unsure which point was the most salient. A billionaire. A genius. Gorgeous. Brilliant. So, so out of Steve’s league, and not interested, and still Steve couldn’t stop dreaming about him.

“Hey,” Tony repeated, his voice still gentle. He leaned into Steve, and Steve leaned back, drinking it up before he could think to stop himself. Their foreheads rested together. “Stop thinking so much. It’s fine. I’m sure I’m going to love whatever you’ve cooked.”

“Okay.” Steve swallowed. He could do this. Tony thought so, so he had to at least try. He stood, plucking the bottle from Tony’s hands. “I’ll pour us some drinks.”

The wine was excellent. Probably in ways Steve couldn’t even comprehend, but he could tell it was good. Tony was thrilled when he saw the bread Steve brought out was homemade, and when they clinked Steve’s wine glass against Tony’s champagne flute of non-alcoholic cider, Steve forgot, for a moment, to be embarrassed that his dining table was made from a repurposed electrical spool.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone cook for me before who wasn’t related to me by blood or being paid to do it,” Tony said, taking a hearty bite of bread with herbed butter.

“Oh yeah?” Steve tried to keep his voice mild. Judging by how Tony’s face shifted, though, he hadn’t done a very good job.

“Ty wasn’t much for that kind of thing.” He waved a hand. “It’s okay, I know you didn’t ask, I’m just telling, I guess.”

“What was his kind of thing?”

“When we first got together, he used to surprise me with fancy coffee drinks from my favorite cafe. Even though it was in the opposite direction from his place.” Tony watched the bubbles rise and pop in his glass of cider. “Once I was upset about something and he flew us to Venice to try to cheer me up.”

“I can never tell,” Steve began, unsure of his footing on the topic, “if you think he was an asshole or a really sweet guy.”

Tony chuckled. “He was both. He told me once I was lucky that someone like him would even date someone like me, and it was pretty easy to believe.”

“Sounds like he was an asshole who said things that sounded sweet sometimes.”

Tony laughed aloud at that. “Yeah, you could say that.” He shrugged. “I hadn’t really figured out the asshole part while he was alive, and now he’s dead, so I try not to dwell on it.”

“Does being dead now make him less of an ass to you while he was alive?”

“It changes how I think about it,” Tony said, tilting his head in thought.

“Peggy and Bucky being dead changes how I think of them, too,” Steve said. “But I guess it doesn’t change how much I care about them.”

“Yeah?” Tony stirred his soup absently. “I’d think it’d be easy to forget about someone if they aren’t around. Too easy.”

“I guess that’s part of why I’ve been researching Peggy’s family,” Steve admitted. “Not ready to stop loving her, maybe.”

Tony stared at him for a moment. “Yeah, maybe. Do you think you’ll ever be?”

Steve shook his head. “Not entirely.”

“Yeah?” Tony said. Steve couldn’t read the expression on his face. Thoughtful, maybe. Appraising.

“Yeah,” Steve said. Tony seemed to notice Steve watching him and turned his attention to the loaf of bread. He took the bread knife and began sawing into it, scattering crumbs over the tablecloth. His hands worked in precise, sure movements. His fingernails were short, and little nicks and scrapes wound their way around his knuckles. God, he was just slicing bread, and Steve felt like he could watch him forever. He would always love Peggy, but that wouldn’t stop him from loving anyone else.

He wondered if he’d ever stop feeling this way about Tony.

 

_________

 

The remains of their dinner and dessert were spread over the table in piles of artichoke leaves, bread crumbs, empty soup bowls, and strawberry tops. After a single glass of wine, Steve had switched to cider along with Tony, and they sat on the loveseat drinking together, their elbows bumping as they talked.

Tony swirled the sparkling liquid around his glass, watching the bubbles. After a moment, he set it down, taking a deep, decisive breath. His eyes shot to Steve’s and stayed there. His face was flushed. He licked his lips and Steve’s breath caught.

“Tony,” he said quietly. They stared at each other.

Their mouths were centimeters apart. Steve could feel Tony’s breath on his lips, could almost taste it.

Tony raised a hand and gently cupped Steve’s face, his gaze never wavering. Steve couldn’t look away, his eyes pulled to Tony’s like being caught in an undertow.

“Screw it,” Tony whispered, and leaned in. The kiss, when it came, felt inevitable. Tony’s hand slid up Steve’s jaw, threading into his hair, gently pulling Steve’s body against his own. His mouth moved against Steve’s slowly, carefully, with an intensity that left Steve breathless.

Tony worked their mouths together, urging them open, tentatively exploring with his tongue. Steve had spent a lot of time imagining Tony kissing him again, reminding himself how perfect and soft his mouth was, how warm and pliant. He’d also spent a lot of time trying to forget, to be satisfied without. But now Tony was here, giving him this, kissing him with his silky lips, nipping at Steve, pressing fluttering pecks over his chin and jaw.

Steve struggled to find his voice. “Are you sure you want to do this,” he said, his voice coming out low and cracked.

Tony’s hand flexed and tensed and unclenched in Steve’s hair. “Yes,” he said. His pupils were dilated, making his eyes look dark and huge. “I want this. I want you.”

“Please,” Steve croaked, not knowing what he was begging for.

“I’ve wanted you since I laid eyes on you,” Tony said. “I can be happy, can’t I?” This last he said almost to himself, so quiet Steve was barely sure he’d heard it.

Steve answered by moving back into Tony’s space, taking Tony’s mouth hard and deep and insistent. He heard Tony inhale sharply as he kissed back, plunging his tongue into Steve’s mouth. His back arched and he let out a sharp, delicious gasp. Steve growled, took Tony’s shoulders in his hands, gripped and tugged him close.

Tony was panting when he pulled away, his mouth glistening. Steve still had his fingers dug into Tony’s shoulders, felt him tremble under his hands.

“Take me upstairs?” Tony said, his voice quavering.

Steve stole one more wet, warm kiss before releasing Tony’s shoulders. He took his hand in his own and led him toward the stairs. He didn’t know why Tony was changing his mind now, if something was different about this night or about Tony or Steve himself. It didn’t matter, because Tony was here with him, he could feel Tony’s pulse fluttering under his fingers, could hear each of his ragged breaths as they took one creaking step after another. He rubbed his thumb over Tony’s skin in what he hoped was a soothing gesture. “I’ve got you,” he said.

Tony’s smile was small but full of wonder. “I know.”

Steve had spent so long thinking about being in Tony’s huge, golden bed that it felt somehow strange to walk him toward where his own queen-sized mattress lay on the floor. At least his blankets and pillows weren’t a total mess, he thought, as he and Tony fell to their knees opposite each other on the bed.

Steve stroked a hand down the side of Tony’s face, down his throat, over the jut of his collarbone, down to the soft black collar of his shirt. “What,” he breathed. “What do you want to do?”

“Everything,” Tony said, his voice hushed and rough. “Anything.”

Steve moved his hands to the buttons of Tony’s shirt. “Can I,” he started. Tony nodded.

His hands felt huge and imprecise as he worked Tony’s shirt open. Tony was watching him, his eyes blazing. The soft fabric and round buttons felt almost unreal under his hands, his sense of touch as blown away by what was happening as the rest of him. He remembered their kiss in the gardens, Tony pulling away, his eyes shut tight. Would that happen again? Would he remember all the reasons he had not to do this, not be here with Steve? Part of Steve was urging himself to go faster, to hurry up, lest Tony bolt, but another part, the greater part, relished in the slowness of their bodies, in experiencing each exquisite moment.

At last the buttons were undone. He pushed the shirt open and back, and Tony rolled his shoulders with a little shimmy, until the fabric fell around his arms. “You’re beautiful,” Steve managed to say.

“How are you so good to me,” Tony marveled.

How could he not be? Steve thought, leaning down to press his lips against Tony’s chest. He swore he could feel the rush of blood under Tony’s skin, like his whole body was liquid, rushing water. Steve kissed up and down his bare torso, grazing his teeth over skin here and there, stopping to suckle on one of Tony’s nipples. “I don’t,” Steve said between kisses, “I don’t have a lot of experience”—more kisses, pecks down Tony’s abdomen, the muscles twitching deliciously under his mouth—“doing this.”

“You’re doing great,” Tony said. “Perfect. Anything you want to do, Steve, whatever you want, as far as you want to go.”

Steve tugged at the open shirt. Tony obligingly lifted his arms so Steve could pull it all the way off. He tossed it to one side, not bothering to look where it landed. Tony was in his bed, baring more skin to him by the moment, saying these things to him; he didn’t want to worry any more.

“I could blow you,” Tony said, reaching out and running his hands down Steve’s arms. He reached the hem of his shirt and began pulling it up. “Or we can use our hands. Or—”

Steve curved his back so Tony could pull the shirt over his head. “I want,” he said. “Can I. Can I make love to you?”

“Yes,” Tony breathed. “Steve.” He dove forward again, catching Steve’s mouth in his own. His hands were all over Steve’s chest, his arms, and Steve could feel the calluses on his fingers. Every deft touch revealed how practiced, how precise Tony was with his hands.

He stood on his knees, pulling Tony up with him, not breaking the kiss. With trembling hands, Steve reached for Tony’s fly, undid one button, then another until his pants were open and sliding down his hips to his knees. Tony shifted his legs one and a time until he was free of the pants, leaving him wearing only a single scrap of silky, red fabric. Steve bit his lip, glancing down to take in the outline of Tony’s erection.

Tony was panting, his chest heaving with each slow breath. He moved forward until their naked chests were pressed together. Steve could feel faint trickles of sweat on his skin, not knowing which of them it came from. Tony drew his fingernails down Steve’s back, making him gasp and throw back his head. When his hands reached Steve’s pants, he worked to undo them, mimicking the movements Steve had just made until he’d tugged them off Steve’s body entirely. He pulled the waistband of Steve’s boxers down, too, then slid his own underwear off. Steve picked up the clothes in one hand and tossed them to the side, not caring where in the dim room they landed.

Their hips were flush. Steve could feel Tony’s erection against his own, hard and ripe. Tony’s hands continued to skate along Steve’s skin, sending a prickling, delicious feeling up his spine. His own hands had found Tony’s rear, perfect and round and filling his hands with its curves.

Tony rolled his hips against Steve’s.  “Got lube,” he said softly. His eyes were dark. His mouth hung open, slack and wet.

“Yeah.” Steve tore himself away to fumble through the drawer of his little nightstand until he found it. His unsure movements felt magnified, sluggish. He kept thinking that any moment now Tony would realize that Steve didn’t know what he was doing, would remember why he’d said no to this for so long, and be on his way. But Tony just watched as he poured some onto one hand, rubbed it between his fingers to warm it up.

When Steve was back on his knees opposite him, Tony took Steve’s wrist in one hand and guided it between the cheeks of his rear. He’d done this by himself loads of times. It couldn’t be that different doing it to someone else, he reassured himself. With a steadying breath, Steve nudged one slick fingertip around Tony’s hole. Tony jolted, letting out a strangled moan. His shoulders dropped and he fell against Steve’s chest, pressing his face against his neck, his body going lax as Steve worked his finger slowly in and around the tight muscles.

With every movement and crook of his finger, Steve felt Tony writhe and then relax over him. “More,” Tony whispered against Steve’s throat. “Please, more.”

What could Steve do but oblige? Tony was here, his body pulsing, open and bare to Steve’s touch. He slipped another finger inside and was immediately rewarded by a throaty, needy gasp. Tony lifted his head and fit their mouths back together, his mouth open and hot and desperate against Steve’s. Their teeth clacked as the kiss grew increasingly sloppy and loose. Tony wriggled his hips, bearing down on Steve’s hand, his tongue and spit and breath filling Steve’s mouth.

Steve continued to work his fingers in and out of Tony’s hole, sliding them back and forth, feeling the muscles stretch and open around him.

“Going to take all of it,” Tony said into Steve’s mouth. “Everything.”

Steve wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but couldn’t help but agree. He slid his hand out, fingers lingering on the contours of Tony’s cheeks. Gently, he pushed Tony onto his back. Tony went smoothly, languidly, spreading his legs as he fell against the pillows.

“Good?” Tony asked, licking is already wet lips.

“Perfect,” Steve said, again unsure of what was being asked but this time feeling sure of the answer. Whatever else, Tony was perfect. He crouched over Tony’s open legs, pushed his two fingers back inside of his hole.

Tony threw back his head with a sharp inhale, exposing the line of his throat. Steve watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed and canted his hips, doing his best to fuck himself on Steve’s fingers. He felt hot and tight and wonderful and Steve couldn’t wait to push his cock inside of him. As slowly as he could, he added a third finger. Tony gasped and drove himself down against Steve’s hand, his cock bouncing plump and pink against his stomach.

“That’s it,” Steve sighed. Tony was so beautiful like this, bare and open, his expression unguarded, his posture loose. With Tony on his back, Steve could see the rosy ring of his hole fluttering around his own fingers. He felt the tight muscles relax under his touch, watched his fingers slide in and out again and again and again. The way Tony relaxed under Steve’s touch, it was easy to believe that he was sure he wanted to be here, in Steve’s bed.

“Condom?” Tony breathed.

“Are you ready?” Steve asked, the words coming out ragged, revealing how overwhelmed he felt.

“Yes, please, please, want you inside me,” Tony babbled, still rolling and grinding onto Steve’s hand.

Steve removed his hand again, enjoying the bereft sound Tony gasped out at its absence, the way his spine curved as he canted his hips. He panted, his lips open and slack as he watched Steve grope through the nightstand drawer for condoms. Finally he held up a crinkly packet, the outside so smooth as to be almost slippery in his hand. Tony snatched it from him, tore it open with his teeth. With sure hands he unrolled it over Steve’s cock, more smoothly and confidently than Steve ever managed to do it himself.

More importantly, Tony was touching his cock. Steve shuddered, thrust his hips forward unconsciously.

“God, Steve,” Tony said. “Look at you.”

Steve dove down to capture Tony’s mouth once more. He lowered himself down until the head of his cock was pressed against Tony’s hole. For a moment he hovered there, teasing at the opening, until Tony bore down on him and it was all Steve could do to push back, to press inside and bury himself to the hilt.

Tony cried out, a flare of stuttering vowels, his hands grasping at the bedcovers. The velvet heat of him was so tight and good that for a moment Steve couldn’t think, everything going fuzzy and empty in his brain. Then he blinked and saw Tony under him, his breath heavy, his body relaxed and open, his eyes dark and hungry, and rocked forward, thrusting into him. Tony jerked and trembled and called out under him, moving his legs to wrap them around Steve’s waist.

“Feel so good, Steve,” Tony groaned, his voice strangled and almost slurred, and Steve had done that, Steve did that to Tony. His thighs trembled against Steve’s skin. Steve pulsed his hips, rocked and moved inside of him.

“You’re perfect,” Steve panted, finding a rhythm in Tony’s body.

“Kiss me,” Tony said through a stuttering moan. “Need you to kiss me.”

Steve kissed him. Tony’s mouth moved and opened, slow and wet and thorough. His hand found Tony’s cock, tentatively stroked down the silky skin of its shaft. Tony groaned, the sound vibrating through Steve’s jaw.

He wanted Tony to be his, to do whatever he could to keep him here, and it was with that thought that he thrust deeper and faster, letting his body dictate the pace. Tony’s cock was leaking precome over Steve’s hand, his mouth was lax and full of their tongues and spit, all while Steve moved in and out in slick, wet pulses.

“So good,” Tony gasped into his mouth. “So good to me. How did—why—”

“Shhh,” Steve crooned. “I’ve got you.”

“You’ve got me,” Tony repeated, his voice rough and wondering, his eyelids fluttering. He bent his head, nibbled and kissed down Steve’s neck, leaving trails of saliva on his skin.

He worked his cock in and out of Tony’s tight, straining body, every movement rewarded by low gasps and groans. He tried to memorize every sensation sparking over his skin, the weight of Tony’s full, erect cock in his fist, the wonderful, hot tightness clutching around him, the slip and slide of Tony’s mouth.

Time turned into a slow, viscous thing, syrupy and sluggish and impossible to quantify. Everything was slick wetness and the motion of their hips and hands. All that mattered was Tony under him, his breath going jagged, his limbs liquid and languorous.

“So close,” Tony whispered. “Oh god, oh god, Steve—” All at once he tensed, his words dissolving into a strangled yell as he came across Steve’s hand. Steve watched, entranced, as Tony shuddered against him. He felt warmth building in his abdomen as his own orgasm approached, spurred on by the sight of Tony coming to pieces under him, and then he was pulsing, his climax hitting him like a wave. Pleasure coursed through him, and Tony squeezed around him, bearing down and pulling his orgasm out of him.

For a moment they lay there, the smell of their sweat mingling in the air, the rush of blood beating under their skin. This stillness was maybe even better than the fucking, Steve thought: the intimacy of it, the rhythm of their matching breaths the only sound in the room.

With a sigh he pushed himself up, slowly pulled out. He tugged the condom off, tied it off, and tossed it to one side. Tony was smiling up at him, almost shyly, his eyes bright and sparkling.

“That was,” Tony exhaled deeply, lapsed for a moment into a giggle, and then continued, “wonderful.”

“Yeah?” Steve settled beside Tony, wrapping one arm around him.

“Yeah,” Tony repeated, nestling against Steve’s chest. “Needed this. Needed you.”

“You’re staying,” Steve whispered. “Right?”

Tony chuckled, warm and rich, sending electricity shooting down Steve’s spine. “Of course.”

 

_________

 

Steve had thumbtacked an old quilt as best he could over the big round window in his bedroom, but it wasn’t big enough to block out the light entirely. Now morning sun spilled through the curved edges of the frame, covering Tony’s sprawled form with sunbeams. Steve carefully moved his favorite armchair to the right spot and settled into the lumpy upholstery. He clipped a sheet of bristol to his drawing board and perched it on his lap, a set of pastels balanced on the arm of his chair as he set to work.

He’d only begun sketching out where Tony’s limbs tangled with the sheets and blankets when his subject began to stir. “It’s too bright,” he groaned, his voice muffled by both the pillow and the remnants of sleep.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/153854486@N08/44006532590/in/photostream/)

Steve smiled, leaned his board against the chair, and crawled back onto the mattress beside Tony. “Sorry,” he said, tracing Tony’s jawline with his hand. “I’ll try to cover up the window more next time.”

“Steve!” Tony’s voice was brighter now, though still fogged with fatigue. He cuddled closer to him, reaching an arm over Steve’s shoulders and burying his face in Steve’s chest. “Why are you covered in clothes,” Tony pouted.

Steve chuckled. “I went downstairs to make breakfast. There’s French toast in the oven for whenever you’re ready.”

“Mmm, French toast.” Tony sighed contentedly. “But you can only distract me with food for so long. You didn’t need clothes for _that_.”

“We can always take them off again,” Steve reminded him.

Tony lifted his head off of Steve with a grin. Suddenly his smile vanished, replaced by a studious frown. “Steve,” Tony said slowly. “Did you forget to put in one of your contacts?”

“Hmm? Oh, no. I only need them for long-distance stuff, I haven’t put them in yet this morning.”

Tony stared. “You have one blue eye and one green.”

Steve shrugged, a little self-conscious. His left contact lens was tinted blue, so that his eyes matched. The mismatch bothered some people, but he didn’t usually think about it much. It hadn’t occurred to him that Tony hadn’t seen him without the contacts before. “It’s just heterochromia. That’s how my eyes are.”

“Yeah.” Tony swallowed. He moved further out of Steve’s reach and then, bewilderingly, took off the _lunula_ necklace. The silver chain puddled around the pendant in the palm of his hand as he offered it to Steve. “I want you to have this. Will you wear it?”

“Sure,” Steve said slowly, taking the necklace. He clasped it around his own neck. It was still warm from resting against Tony’s skin. “Thank you, I know it means a lot to you.”

“Hey, weird question,” Tony said with false cheer. He licked his lips. “When you said you were sick as a kid and then you suddenly got better. You meant suddenly, as in, like, it just _felt_ sudden, right, you got treatment and improved and then—”

“Well,” Steve frowned. “It was pretty abrupt. The doctors didn’t know what to make of it. My mom said it was a miracle, actually. I was getting treated, yeah, but it wasn’t doing much, and then, _wham_ , I woke up one day and the inhalers actually helped and I didn’t hurt all over and I wasn’t tired and—what is it?”  

“When?”

“When what?”

“When did this—miracle—happen?”

“I was 14. It was the middle of August.” He’d been worried he wouldn’t be well enough to return to school in the fall, and then, all at once, he’d been in near perfect health. The growth spurts had started after that.

Tony’s eyes were wide. He was trembling. “Can I ask you something else?”

“Of course.” Steve brushed a stray curl behind Tony’s ear. “Are you alright? What’s wrong?”

“Before, when you said you don’t, um, do this? Very often? And, when you said you don’t have a lot of experience.” Steve nodded. “What did you mean?”

Steve felt his face heat and tried not to avoid Tony’s eyes. “Uh. I meant. I’ve only had sex with one person before? Peggy.”

“Peggy, your girlfriend,” Tony said.

“I’ve always known I liked men as well as women,” Steve insisted, latching onto anything that might be causing Tony so much distress. “You knew I was with Peggy. I talk about her all the time.”

“But. You haven’t, hadn’t, been with a man before?” Tony’s eyes were darting all over now, as if looking for something in Steve’s face that he couldn’t find.

“Does it matter?”

“Steve. Are you sexually attracted to men?”

Steve’s brow creased. “Yes, of course—”

“It’s just. You haven’t known me very long.”

Steve smiled sheepishly. “You’re pretty amazing, Tony.”

But Tony was shaking his head. “Okay, here’s another question.” He inhaled deeply and locked his eyes back on Steve’s. “Look I—I like you a lot Steve, I’m completely enamored with you, but—”

Steve didn’t let him get to the question part. “I like you a lot too, Tony,” he said softly. “I’m falling for you, is that what you need to hear? Can you tell me now what’s wrong?”

Tony shook his head. “That’s not—you don’t know me.”

“I like what I know so far,” Steve insisted.

“Steve, did I pressure you into sleeping with me?”

“God no!” Steve pulled Tony’s face against his own and pressed a kiss to his lips. Tony kissed back, warm and firm and rich, but then he whimpered softly—not at all the way he had the night before. Steve pulled away, trying to puzzle out the expression on Tony’s face. “Can you tell me what this is about? I know you were—hesitant—to change our friendship, but—”

Tony wriggled away from Steve’s hand and got to his feet. “I have to go.”

Stunned, Steve stared as Tony darted around the room, hunting for his clothes and pulling them on as he found them. “Can—can we talk later? We don’t need to figure it all out right now, okay? It’s going to be alright.”

Tony scrubbed at his eyes with his hands. “God, what did I—it wasn’t supposed to—no. I—can’t.” He avoided Steve’s eye. “You should hate me.”

“What? Why would I hate you?” Steve felt rooted to the bed. They were supposed to be past this. Tony had stayed the night, he had stayed. What was going on? What had he said to set Tony off like this? How could he fix it?

Tony laughed hollowly. “Christ, you don’t deserve this. I should have realized, I should’ve—” he cut himself off. He was fully dressed now, though not anywhere close to as neatly as usual. His hair stuck up in all directions, and Steve yearned to reach up a hand to smooth it. After last night, he’d thought he was finally getting permission to do those things.

Tony met Steve’s eyes. “Be safe, Steve.”

He turned and darted from the room.

Steve stared at the door for a moment, frozen, before he jumped his feet. He pulled the quilt aside from the window and looked down at Tony’s sleek black car. A half-dozen crows and several blue jays were crowded on the hood and roof, milling and marching like it was their home. They scattered, flying in a smooth arc toward the roof of Steve’s building when Tony ran up to it. He jumped inside and drove off.


	7. The Ocean

The ocean kissed him, pungent and glorious. He moaned, arched into it. It pressed soft, sea-salt kisses over his cheeks, pecked along his jaw, nipped at his lips. Bodies twined in union, a tongue plunging deep into his mouth, the ocean spilling into him and filling his lungs and replacing his breath and his blood and his sinews. He found a perfect, answering wetness in response to each lick and taste. 

A warm hand slid down the curve of his ass, everything slippery and blissful. Fingers found his hole, tugged at his rim and pulled him wide. He was floating, buoyed by the depths of the sea and the lightness that overtook his body as pleasure built within him. The horizon was a wet blur where the pale slate of the sky met the undulating aegean blue of the ocean. Above him the moon was full, swollen with light and its own roundness, as heavy and full as his own cock. 

He let out a deep groan, thrust against the flood of touch. The fingers against his rim worked at him and he felt his legs splay open, his whole self unfurl. The exploration continued, skimming from his crack to find the tightening skin of his balls. He canted his hips and a body rocked against him in answer. 

He was swimming, his limbs churning through the water, each stroke propelling him toward his destination. The ocean was with him. Something glinted gold, a brilliance past even the ripples of moonlight that caught on the crests of every wave. There was crimson, too, a swollen, heady scarlet redder even than the red of kiss-bruised lips. 

Colors enumerated themselves before him: the dusky rose of his own cock; the waves catching the light in flutters of pewter, indigo, and flint; the pink flush rising in his cheeks, in the tips of his fingers; the bone and ivory gleam of the moon, blooming into a pale, creamy sepia; the strawberries-and-cream complexion of his skin; and everywhere the overwhelming blue of the ocean, at once crushing in its darkness and uplifting in its openness. But most prominent among these colors were the shards of gold, gleaming and shining with a metallic sharpness, and the rush of an ineffable, wine-dark red, trickling and spurting into view like blood welling up from a wound.

Tension built, a rumbling of want. He tasted pre-come and clean skin and the musk of the sea. He felt the fingers work inside him, sliding so slippery that they must be glistening with slick. His hole clenched around them. Over the susurration of the sea, he heard himself gasping out with broken and wordless moans. 

Then he was awake and empty, and his bedroom was silent. 

Steve got out of bed quickly, rushed downstairs and hopped in the shower. Something in him opened and relaxed once he was under the water. With a relieved sigh, he turned his attention to his cock. He leaned into the spray of the shower head as he stroked himself, letting the still strong sense-memory of being surrounded by water do most of the work of maintaining his arousal. His breath hitched as he recalled the sensation of warm fingers working him open. Pleasure mounted in him, and he pressed a finger inside, mimicking the feeling from his dream. 

Part of him missed the smell of the ocean—and hadn’t he read somewhere that it wasn’t possible to smell things in dreams?—and the way the water had surrounded and filled him so completely. As little as the idea made sense now, it made the single finger inside him feel paltry. He added another, imagining his fingers belonged to someone else, lingering in the memory of another’s touch on his cock, of being touched and stroked and fucked by a force of nature. 

The motions of his hand on his cock and the one inside him sped up. He added a third finger, enjoying the stretch, feeling his orgasm approach. He remembered the caress of the ocean, the light of the moon, the glimmer of gold. A pair of blue eyes. 

He cried out, his back arching as he came. His whole body shook for a moment, while come slid down his chest. 

Had those eyes been part of his dream? He didn’t think so, now. 


	8. Chapter 4 - The Gathering of Crows

The day that Tony fled from his bedroom, Steve was sure that, whatever had happened between them, it could be worked out if they just talked. They cared about each other, and whatever had spooked Tony, they would figure it out. Together.

Two days later, it was the night of the full moon, all of Steve's calls and texts had gone unanswered, and he wasn't so sure.

He wasn't about to invade Tony's privacy, interrupt whatever it was he got up to every month at Keyhole Beach, but he couldn’t help but think about Tony out there on the sand, watching the sun as it set over the waves.

At the time of the previous full moon, a Wednesday in March, Steve had asked: “Why the full moon?” He was getting his things to leave Tony’s mansion for the night, skirting around a snow-white cat who seemed to think that Steve collecting his belongings and packing away his sketching supplies was an invitation for a fun game of chase.

“Maybe I’m just superstitious,” Tony replied, grinning wolfishly.

Steve chuckled and tried to ease his drawing pad out from under a sleeping tortoiseshell cat without disturbing her sleep. Her glare indicated that he was failing. “And what superstitious stuff is it you get up to, on that beach every month?”

When they’d been kids, Steve and Bucky had spent hours on end collecting rocks on the beach. A good day would turn up smooth shards of agate, jasper, carnelian, and petrified wood. The best prize of all, though, had been the hag stones. Steve had thought of the hag stones as miniature versions of the big rock formation at Keyhole Beach: a stone with a hole near the center that went all the way through. Bucky’s mother swore they had magical properties, that they warded off the evil eye. She assured them that looking through the eye of a hag stone revealed the true nature of things, the magic hidden among the mundane, the secrets of the past—and sometimes, the future. On the rare occasions they’d stumbled across a good hag stone, the game had changed from one of searching and collecting to one of peering through the magical aperture of the rock, trying to catch a glimpse of the supernatural.

When Steve asked about Tony’s visits to Keyhole Beach every full moon, Tony had gazed at him as intently as Steve and Bucky had once looked through those hag stones.

“I’ll take you with me sometime,” Tony said after a moment, his face easing into a soft, gentle smile.

It had felt like a gift. Steve didn’t understand why, and he didn’t ask further questions about it.

Now, sitting alone on his threadbare loveseat, reading over all of his unanswered text messages for the fifth time, Steve knew that Tony was out there on the beach, doing whatever it was he did under the full moon.

 

_________

 

“Stark still hasn’t texted you back, huh?” Clint asked.

Steve looked up from the table, where he’d been checking his phone and picking at the label on his beer. “Sorry, I just—it doesn’t make any sense,” he grumbled, shutting off the screen of his phone and slipping it into his jeans pocket. It had been two weeks since he’d watched Tony run out of his apartment and drive off.

“It can be pretty hard to get over something if you don’t know why it ended,” Clint said, slapping Steve on the shoulder companionably. “Sucks he won’t even give you that.”

“I’m tired of thinking about it, but I can’t stop,” Steve said, turning his eyes to the empty paper plate in front of him.

“When you fall for someone, you fall hard,” Natasha said. She fiddled with her pizza, twirling a stray strand of mozarella around her finger, reminding Steve of how Tony used his pinky to test the temperature of his coffee. “Nothing wrong with that.”

“Yeah, but—hey!” Steve cut himself off when a huge crow—practically the size of a house cat—landed on the picnic table barely a foot from where the three of them were sitting.

“No pizza for you!” Clint said, jumping to his feet and swatting at the bird. It tilted its head and hopped a few yards down the table, still eyeing them.

“Your dog is slacking off, Barton,” Natasha commented.

Sure enough, Lucky was still dozing at their feet, enjoying the shade under the table, seemingly unaware or uncaring of the bird’s arrival.

“Ugh, for real, get it together, dog,” Clint admonished, ducking under the table to glare at Lucky. The effect was somewhat ruined by the pizza crust he offered in one hand, which Lucky gobbled enthusiastically. “You’re supposed to be protecting us from wild beasties, not just mooching all our food.” Clint straightened and wiped his hand on his t-shirt. “Seriously though, I feel like I’m in a Hitchcock movie.” He shuddered dramatically.

Natasha rolled her eyes. “It’s one bird.”

“Uh, no, it’s like, one billion. Look.” Clint pointed at the row of trees that lined the sidewalk. Natasha had her back to them. Steve, sitting beside Clint, had been paying more attention to his phone.

He looked now to see the branches filled with crows. There were a few sparrows, seagulls, pigeons, and jays among them, but the large black forms of the crows predominated. With the lush greenery of the assorted maples, oaks, and alders, there could have been still more birds hidden deeper in the branches. A Mexican fan palm on the corner looked comical, almost like a Dr. Suess illustration, weighted as it was with crows.

One of Tony’s superstitions had been the practice of touching iron— _tocca ferro,_ apparently the Italian version of touching wood—after tempting fate or discussing a morbid topic. He didn’t do it often, but Steve had soon realized this was because there was seldom iron around. When they’d been walking the grounds, Tony would find a bit of fence or a tool to touch. In the living rooms of the mansion, there was usually some iron fireplace tools to tap. But in his workshops, balconies, and beach, he would often lift a hand and reach out as if to touch something, then lower it again.

Looking at the throng of crows before him, Steve felt the impulse to touch iron.

“Okay,” Natasha said slowly, twisting back around to face Steve and Clint again. “That _is_ a little creepy.”

“It must be a weird migration thing,” Steve suggested. He’d been seeing more birds than usual lately, so it had been on his mind. “Climate change and the fires and everything changing the usual patterns.”

“Yeah,” Clint said through a mouthful of pizza. “Must be.”

A server came by then to see if they needed more beer or water but was soon distracted by Lucky. “Oh my god!” she squealed. “What a cutie. Can I say hi?”

Clint grinned. “Go for it.”

She immediately ducked down and nuzzled her face in Lucky’s. “Hey pupper-ino!” Lucky licked her nose, startling a laugh out of her. She rubbed his ears and cooed more praise before standing again and straightening out her apron. “I _love_ working the patio, we get all the best dogs,” she confided. “All set?”

“We’re good,” Clint replied.

“You should leave her your phone number,” Natasha advised Clint, watching him watch her walk away. “Invite her to the cabin next weekend.”

“Nah.” Clint shook his head. “Not my type.”

“What, gorgeous and a foot taller than you doesn’t do it for you any more?” Natasha asked.

“Just not in the mood. And it’s better this way, just the three of us single ladies!”

Natasha smirked.

“Can’t wait,” Clint said. He took a slice of pizza from the table and held it out at dog height. Lucky obligingly got to his feet and gobbled it down.

“You spoil that animal,” Natasha admonished.

“Yep,” Clint agreed.

“Speaking of singledom,” Natasha went on, turning to Steve. “Could it have been because you’re bi?”

Steve groaned. “We’ve been over this, it’s not a biphobia thing.”

“But you said he asked you about Peggy before he bolted,” she pointed out. “C’mon, at least it’s a plausible explanation.”

“What, he thinks Steve’s really only into women and he’s just an experiment, or Steve’s confused or something?” Clint said. “Possible, I guess. But Steve’s right, I mean, Stark doesn’t really sound like the biphobic type.”

“Well, we never got to meet him, did we,” Natasha reminded him. Her tone was mild but the unspoken judgment was clear. “Although that’s true enough, just from everything I’ve read about him, and everything Steve said.”

“Don’t you think I’ve been over this in my head a million times?” Steve sighed. “I know you’re trying to help, but unless you can get him to talk to me, there’s nothing you can do.”

“Okay, how’s this,” Clint said, tossing a balled up napkin from one hand to the other. “He’s just a weirdo. He’s crazy. His last boyfriend died suddenly and mysteriously, that already is gonna fuck someone up. And now he’s a recluse, right? There you go. He’s got some shit going on, and it has nothing to do with you.”

Steve knew Clint meant well, but it still hurt to hear those kinds of uncharitable comments about Tony. “Maybe. Look, I don’t want to talk about it anymore, okay?” He sighed. “There’s nothing more to say. I’m sorry I keep checking my phone when we’re hanging out.”

“Damn right you are,” Natasha said.

The conversation drifted then to a local ballot initiative Natasha was covering for the _Free Press_ , a new coworker of Clint’s who he was calling Shaggy for his resemblance to the Scooby Doo character, and an illustration of tardigrades Steve was working on for a science journal. After the server returned with their check and a biscuit for Lucky, they all stood, distributing their cash into the little black pleather folder. Steve saw Clint slip a scrap of paper in along with his money just before he ducked under the table to untie Lucky’s leash from the wooden beams.

“Oh, what are you giving me that smug look for,” Clint complained as they exited the restaurant patio toward the sidewalk.

“I _knew_ that waitress was your type,” Natasha said.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I just gave her my number, we’ll see what happens,” Clint grumbled.

“It’s kind of uncanny when you do that,” Steve observed, peering at Natasha.

She chuckled. “You draw plants and animals, you notice plants and animals. I write about people, I notice people.” She turned to Clint. “So, you gonna ask her to the cabin?”

Clint turned serious. “Nah. I mean. Maybe I would if you guys were bringing dates or something, but it’s the anniversary. So…”

Natasha sobered as well. “Yeah,” she said after a moment. “That makes sense.”

The awkward silence lingered until they reached Clint’s car. “You wanna ride, Steve?”

“No thanks, I’ll just walk.” It was a beautiful evening, and Steve had skipped more of his morning jogs than he’d like to admit since Tony had run out of his apartment. He hoped walking home would clear his head. They made their goodbyes and Steve tossed a wave in their direction as Clint drove off toward Natasha’s apartment and Steve began his walk in the opposite direction.

The afternoon sun had burned off the morning’s fog, but now that the sun was setting, a jagged chill was returning to the air. He’d gone a few blocks, his hands in the pockets of his jacket, when the smell of eucalyptus made him look up at the branches above him.

Shuffling and cawing quietly among the silver-purple and olive colored leaves were dozens of crows. They seemed to notice his attention, hopping down to lower branches, ruffling their feathers, calling out more loudly.

Steve hunched his shoulders, wondered if he could find any articles about changes in crow migration that spring, and kept walking.

His shadow lengthened in front of him as he went on. It stretched into a Giacometti sculpture, gaunt and pinched with craggy edges. Nearly all the trees he passed were filled with crows, too, and they called to each other, all affronted croaks and aspirated caws.

A loud squawk made him turn, and he saw a broad figure dart just out of sight a block or so behind him. The angle of the sun was low and far too bright, marking the time of day when it was most dangerous to walk or drive because of the visibility. Steve couldn’t be sure he’d really seen someone or if his eyes were playing tricks on him. Hell, maybe it was even a crow flying by, and his mind had turned it into the shape of a man.

Still, he crossed to the other side of the street and sped up his pace a little.

A half-mile later, he was sure someone was following him. The glare from the sun made it hard to see, but several times he glanced back to catch a flash of someone keeping pace with him, their body nothing but a washed-out, backlit silhouette.

Steve made several abrupt turns and detours, making sure to head toward more populated, well-lit areas. Unfortunately those were few and far between on a weeknight in Nublado, where most business closed by five or six, and there were no street lamps even on the 101. Drivers were expected to get by using just their headlights. Still, there were a few restaurants scattered around, and it was reassuring to know he could duck into one if he needed to.

Steve hadn’t been in many physical fights, not really, unless you counted getting beat up as a scrawny kid, which he didn’t. When he’d hit his growth spurt and started filling out, going jogging and lifting weights, usually all he needed to do to stop an altercation or scare off a bully was step in and stare the guy down. Bucky had tried to teach him how to throw a punch a few times, but it hadn’t really taken. He’d never practiced it and figured he’d never need to know.

He was hoping now that he still wouldn’t. Judging from the glimpses he caught, the guy trailing him was big, nearly the same size as Steve himself. And Steve didn’t quite see how he was keeping up with him—the streets were dim and full of big dark trees whose branches hung low over the sidewalk. It made a part of him wonder if he were imagining the whole thing. There was no one else out on the streets, as there rarely was in this neighborhood, but maybe it was just another pedestrian, or several even, who were taking similar routes to Steve.

Then Steve remembered something he’d read long ago in a women’s magazine, probably in the waiting room for a dentist appointment or an annual check-up—or maybe even further back, at the office of yet another specialist who’d be unable to help even one of Steve’s chronic conditions. The magazine had had a list of things women could do if they felt unsafe in public. Most of it had been bullshit, but the one that stuck in his mind now was a recommendation to call a friend. The idea was that someone was less likely to attack you if they knew someone on the other line would notice you suddenly disconnecting or screaming.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket as fast as he could without slowing down. Clint would still be driving, but Natasha was probably home by now, and it was still quite early in the evening. He hit the call button.

Natasha answered after the second ring. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Steve said, immediately relieved.

“What’s up?”

“Just walking home. Almost to, lesse, sixth street now.”

“Oh?” Natasha, of course, immediately noticed something was up. “You okay?”

“Probably,” Steve said, keeping his tone conversational. If someone was listening, he didn’t want them to know he was unsettled. He was just a guy, walking through town, having a normal phone call with a friend. “But who knows, right?”

“Right,” Natasha said slowly. “Well, I’ll stay on the line with you until you get inside, how’s that?”

“Perfect.”

“Someone bothering you?”

“Not exactly,” Steve said. “I mean, I’m not sure.”

“No worries. You should come to one of my self-defense classes sometime,” she said mildly.

“Yeah, that sounds pretty appealing right now.”

Natasha talked him through the rest of his walk home. Their conversation was interrupted by the occasional cawing of crows. Surreptitious glances whenever he crossed a street confirmed that, following or not, there was a figure less than a block away the entire rest of the trip.

When Steve reached the front porch of his apartment building, he felt a relief clutch in his chest that he didn’t want to examine too closely.

“Your neighbors home?”

“Looks like it.” Even though he wanted to throw himself inside and lock the door behind him like a little kid running from a monster into his mom’s bedroom, he made himself walk in a measured way up to the first landing. If someone was really following him, he didn’t want them to know they’d gotten to him. “Just gonna check my mail,” he narrated aloud. He reached inside his mailbox to scoop out its contents before practically racing up the rest of the stairwell, unlocking his door, and shutting himself inside with a sigh of relief.

He sank down to his kitchen floor, his mail tumbling out onto the linoleum. “Huh,” he said, frowning. “There’s something weird with my mail.”

“What, like a porn mag?” Nat asked.

“Ha ha,” he said. “No, like a rock or something.” He bent over to sort through the pile of papers. Even now, more than a decade after his health problems had disappeared, there was a part of him that expected stacks of medical bills and past due notices. It was just junk though—as usual.

Then he lifted up a political ad to find something smooth and round, with a narrow pointed part extending from it.

“Huh,” he said. “It’s a bird skull.”

“One of your neighbors must have left it for you.”

“Maybe,” Steve said slowly. “Well, anyway, I’m upstairs inside now. Thanks for staying on the line with me.” He tidied the pile of junk mail, got to his feet, and dumped it into the recycling.

“Any time. Your first time being followed home?”

“Yeah,” he said with a sigh. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “It might have been my imagination, I dunno.”

“Well, it’s good to trust your instincts. Better safe than sorry, right?”

“Right. Really Nat, I appreciate it. I’m sure you have better things to do.”

“Oh yeah,” she said wryly. “Rewriting my piece for the _Free Press_ for the ninth time, watching ‘Last Week Tonight,’ painting my nails. Crucial stuff.”

“Well, good luck with your article.”

“Good night, Steve.”

“Night, Nat.”

He ended the call and picked up the skull. He took the it up to his bedroom, where had some of his old animal anatomy textbooks. At a glance, it looked like some kind of corvid. After examining it, measuring parts of it, and comparing it to several diagrams—including a few he looked up on his computer—he determined that it was from a crow.

He tried to imagine how it had ended up in his mailbox. He barely spoke to any of his neighbors, in the building or otherwise, and as far as he remembered, none of them knew that he did scientific illustration. But maybe he was wrong. Maybe he’d mentioned it to one of them. He must have—Natasha’s idea was the only thing that explained why someone would put an animal’s skull in his box.

He turned at a tapping on his window. Seven crows sat on his windowsill. The largest, standing at one end, had its head cocked so its beady eyes seemed to be peering directly at Steve. It rapped on the window with its beak.

 

_________

 

After another evening, a few nights later, of thinking he saw a broad figure following him on his walk home, Steve began avoiding walking on his own near or after dark. On the few occasions he ended up doing so anyway, he stayed on the phone with Clint, Natasha, or his friend Sam. Sam had attended Cuarzo State with the rest of them and now lived in Santa Cruz, but he was always happy to keep Steve verbal company on his walks.

Talking to Sam more often, though, reminded Steve how informally they’d been keeping in touch before then. They saw each other every few months, in San Francisco for Pride weekend most years, or when one of them was driving through the other’s way for one thing or another, shared the occasional text or Facebook conversation, but little more. As a result, Steve realized that he hadn’t mentioned his friendship with Tony to Sam before then.

“Can you get me a new StarkBook?” Sam asked one night while Steve speed-walked down the best-lit street in his neighborhood.

“I probably could have,” Steve said. A crow in an oak tree behind him cawed sharply. A crow in a maple tree ahead of him cawed in reply. “Not so much any more.”

“Dude, do you think it’s Stark following you?” Sam asked.

“That doesn’t even start to make sense,” Steve sighed. “I’m the one who was harassing _him,_ leaving a million voicemails and texting him constantly.” Although Steve hadn’t actually texted or called since that first week, he’d wanted to quite a few times. Like every time he saw an RV with a funny name, or a cat or a flower or the moon or...or all the time, really.

“Whatever man, just saying,” Sam said, not sounding remotely chagrined. At the end of the block, six crows milled and pecked in the tight space on top of a mailbox.

Steve hadn’t found any articles about changes in migration patterns that might explain the appearance of so many crows. There had been a short column about them in the local section of a Sunday issue of the _Free Press_ , though it hadn’t explained them either. It had just been quotations from county residents commenting on where—mostly Old Town Nublado—and when—pretty much constantly—they had seen the large groups of birds, and their own guesses on where they’d come from. Steve had gotten a laugh out of the guy who said they were robot spies sent by aliens.

It was after an afternoon trip to the beach with Lucky that Steve returned to his apartment to find his building covered in strange markings. In the light of the bright May sun, the white paint was hard to miss.

The markings were curved, linear shapes, what Steve would call lenticular if he were describing the shape of a leaf or a botanical cross-section. They were distributed over the stairs up to his apartment, over the slats of wood around his front door, and on the door itself. The horde of crows that he had now come to expect to see covering his roof, stairs, and landing seemed to be pecking at the paint in particular when he approached.

 

_________

 

The Friday they headed to the cabin was a bright and hazy blue. The spring rains had only tapered off in the last few weeks, but Steve already missed them.

He was trying not to, because the rain reminded him of Tony, and while he’d given himself permission to miss Tony, this weekend was supposed to be about missing—and commemorating—Bucky and Peggy. The following day would mark six years since the night they’d died.

It was also the quarter moon, which he knew because he now tracked the moon phases without really trying. He’d gotten into the habit during his friendship with Tony, and, well. He hadn’t stopped.

He just hadn’t been able to get Tony out of his head. Most of the time, he didn’t want to.

He spent hours on his phone, composing text messages he wasn’t going to send. Some of them just said, _I miss you_. Others described his day, the drawings he’d been working on, a funny story Clint had told him, his plans for the weekend. Sometimes he wrote out long messages, full of a million questions, listing out all the ways his heart ached to see Tony again, to glimpse his smile, to feel the cool skin of his hand under his own. Steve would type it out, read it over, and then methodically delete the whole thing.

He reread the messages between them over and over again. He watched the videos Tony had sent, of his robots, his cats, of the view of the ocean from the highest tower of his mansion. He savored each time Tony wrote, _can’t wait_ , or _see you soon_ , and imagined it was a text he’d just received, that he was going to stop by the mansion that very afternoon, step into Tony’s workshop and find him barefoot and grinning, elbows-deep in the wiry guts of his latest creation.

Friday afternoon he kept looking over a text conversation they’d had near the end of February. Tony had been talking about Tiberius, something he hardly ever did.

**Tony** : _nah, sometimes it takes me a while to see things for what they really are_   
**Tony** : _I’m supposed to be so smart, you know_   
**Tony** : _but the first time it got bad, with Ty_   
**Tony** : _I just thought_   
**Tony** : _“oh”_ _  
_ **Tony** : _“he needs me more than ever”_

**Steve** : _it’s okay to want to feel needed_

**Tony** : _yeah, but_   
**Tony** : _he didn’t_ _  
_ **Tony** : _he didn’t need me, so._

_I need you_ , Steve thought, reading over the messages now, and wasn’t that pathetic?

In the last few days he’d started reading the letters Tony had shared with him. He’d spent months being too busy with spending time with Tony to pay attention them, but now he turned to them again and again, as if they held answers for Tony’s actions in the present. Where before he’d wanted them to learn more about Peggy and her family, the letters from Sylvana that Elettra had saved now served only to bring up more questions about Tony and his family.

They were frustratingly incomplete. The letters Peggy’s family had given him, from Elettra to Sylvana, were from a completely different time in their lives. There also seemed to be a few gaps from missing pieces of correspondence; Sylvana would reference something she’d mentioned in a past letter from within the time period covered by the ones he had, but it wasn’t one that Steve had read.

It didn’t help that even the way the files were set up reminded him of Tony. He’d sent them to Steve both as high-quality scans and as pdfs, so Steve could read them in Sylvana’s handwriting or in a clearer typeface which he could copy and paste, highlight, and annotate. He was sure Tony had used a special program to convert the images’ old-fashioned handwriting into typewritten text, had maybe even written one himself just for Sylvana’s handwriting.

And the hints of what had come between them—well, it wasn’t quite what Steve had thought. He’d assumed that Sylvana opposed Elettra having a kid for the same reason she’d opposed her marriage—jealousy and frustration that they couldn’t be together. Steve could relate. But there seemed to be something else, too.

_How could you bring a child into this? It isn’t like you to be so selfish._ That was from 1959, when Elettra was pregnant with the baby who would be Maria. Though Sylvana didn’t mention Bernardo by name in that one, Steve couldn’t help but remember what Tony had said about the women in his family committing to men they didn’t love, with bad results. He thought that maybe, in addition to not being the woman who Elettra really loved, Bernardo was repugnant to Sylvana in other ways—possibly even dangerous to his family.

Another letter from later in the year did nothing to elucidate things. _I’m glad you and the baby are well, of course I am,_ Sylvana wrote. _But why did you have to have a girl? Is there no prayer or power to bring you a boy instead?_

The power she referred to was, Steve thought, _la forza_ , a magical inner power used by wise-women. As he should have expected from Tony’s descriptions of his superstitious grandmother, the correspondence between the two women was peppered with similar references to _maghe, guaritori,_ and _malocchio_.

The following letter was dated some months later, and Steve couldn’t be sure whether Sylvana had written more during that time or not. In the next one, her anger had only grown.

_Don’t play dumb with me, Ellie, it doesn’t suit you. You know why I worry about having a girl child, and it’s none of what you’re implying. God knows ours lives would be better with fewer men in them! It’s the life you’re offering her, you craven clod. You’ve not just betrayed me, now, but her, too._

_And that dunce Bernardo hasn’t the slightest idea! He is so happy to have a wife and a child, he doesn’t see a thing going on around under his nose. At least the girl will have a good father, even if her mother doesn’t care that she’s destined for a life of misery._

_You’re just going to let it go on and on forever? We could have been the perfect end to it all, my dear one. But you had to go your own way, as you always do._

In the next letter, they were friends again.

What was it Sylvana thought Elettra was allowing to continue? Not, it seemed, a cycle of parental abuse, since she seemed to think Bernardo would be a good parent after all.

A honk from outside interrupted Steve’s reading as well as the background caws of crows, indicating that Clint had arrived. He shut his laptop, grabbed his bag, and headed out.

 

_________

 

The cabin was a little ways inland, past the valleys and up in the hills where the redwoods grew denser. It belonged to the family of Kate Bishop, one of Clint’s friends from his summers working at Carson's Carnival of Traveling Wonder. Steve had only met Kate at a few of Clint’s bigger parties, and knew little of her family, but judging by the cabin, they were very well-off. From what Clint had said, it wasn’t their only vacation home, either.

It was an A-frame building with dark wooden shingles and an expansive deck cantilevered over a steep hill. In addition to a full kitchen with custom cabinetry, there were two sizable bedrooms and a large loft—the latter of which Clint always claimed, insisting he liked being up high. The main downside of the place was that they weren’t allowed to bring Lucky, since Mr. Bishop was allergic to dogs, but it was also nice to be able to sleep off their hangovers without having to worry about getting up to take care of Lucky’s needs.

Steve wondered sometimes what it must be like to visit the cabin under different circumstances. It wasn’t that he disliked their annual trips out to commemorate the anniversary of the flood, but by nature, they weren’t exactly fun, either.

The trip started the same way it always did. Clint parked the pickup truck he’d borrowed for the weekend in the carport. Everyone carried their bags inside, set them in a pile on one of the overstuffed leather couches, and then collected the Bishops’ fishing supplies and loaded them into the truck. The lake was a short drive from the cabin, and dusk was just beginning to settle when they reached the rocks that marked their favorite fishing spot.

Bucky had loved to come out to this part of the county for bait fishing, ever since he was a kid and his dad first started taking him out on weekends. As soon as Bucky got his driver’s license, he and Steve started going out to the lakes together whenever they could. They kept it up once he started dating Natasha and Steve got with Peggy, joined by Clint and whoever he was seeing at the time. When they’d all gone to Cuarzo State, Sam would join them too. Peggy hadn’t cared for the fishing, herself, though she didn’t mind the fresh fish that everyone else would return with.

Steve liked starting the anniversary weekends this way, in near total silence, just them and the wriggling bait and the ripple of wind on the lake. They passed hours casting, working their way through a 12-pack of beer and an assortment of snacks, the sky growing darker and the air becoming chillier around them. Slowly, the cooler they’d brought no longer contained beer, but a sea of lake water, thawing ice packs, and five rainbow trout. Once Clint caught the sixth fish of the evening, bled it out, and put it in the cooler with the others, they packed up and headed back to the cabin.

Steve started a fire in the wood-burning stove while Clint started cleaning and preparing the fish and Natasha moved her bags into her bedroom. Once the fire was going, Steve helped Natasha set the table, and then the two of them settled onto one of the big couches in front of the stove with fresh bottles of beer.

“To our dead lovers,” Natasha said.

“God, you’re morbid,” Steve said, clinking his bottle with hers.

She smiled a little. “I think I’m entitled, this weekend.”

“Fair enough.”

“You seem to be doing better with all of that lately,” she observed.

“What, with waking up from a coma and finding out the two most important people in my life were dead? Yeah, guess so. Turns out I just needed something else to mope about.” At Natasha’s look he hastened to correct himself. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring up He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, just feeling sorry for myself, I guess.”

“That’s literally the point of this weekend. No, hey,” she added, seeing Steve’s scowl. “It is. Falling for someone else is part of moving on. Peggy would be glad you’re doing that. Being upset when that someone ditches you is just normal, and she’d know that too.”

“Doubt she’d be glad I’m still whining about it.”

Natasha’s smile widened. “No, she wouldn’t.”

“I just want to understand,” Steve said, his voice laced with frustration. “It’s stupid, I don’t know, it’s not like knowing what he’s thinking would mean I could talk him into, you know, dating me or something. I just want to _know_.” So much of Tony was an unknown. Steve had liked that about him, once. The feeling that there was still so much more to discover, that they could spend an endless amount of time together and still find something new to share.

“What stage of grief is Steve on now?” Clint yelled from the kitchen.

“With Peggy and Bucky, or ol’ Whatshisface?” Natasha called back.

“Either!”

Steve elbowed Natasha in the ribs. She just smiled, chugged her beer, and then said, “Acceptance tinged with guilt for Peggy, acceptance for Bucky, and I think anger and depression for Stark.”

“Thank god bargaining is finally over!” Clint said.

Natasha laughed. Steve pouted at her, which only made her laugh harder.

“What about you, you dating anyone these days?” Steve asked.

“Nice subject change, Rogers,” she said. “Why, want some tips on casual hookups in small towns?”

“I’m all set, thanks.”

“I’m seeing a few guys here and there. No one of note. Although, this one—”

Natasha was cut off by an exclamation from the kitchen.

“Uh, what the fuck?” Clint said.

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “You okay in there, Barton? Need first aid?”

“Ugh, _someone_ does. This is _so_ gross. C’mon, check it out!”

“Well, with an invitation like that, how can I refuse?” Natasha asked, getting to her feet with a smirk. “C’mon Steve, let’s see what’s ‘ _so_ gross.’”

Steve followed after her into the kitchen, where Clint stood over a bamboo countertop with the cooler open beside the cutting board he was working on.

“Oh my god, this one has it too,” Clint was saying, slicing into an otherwise intact trout.

Steve peered at the cutting board, where one trout was already gutted and filleted. “What is it?”

“These fish swallowed a bunch of teeth,” Clint said, indicating the fish before him, sounding torn between delight and apprehension.

“Human teeth?” Steve asked.

Natasha picked one up gingerly. “Human teeth,” she confirmed.

“What the fuck, right?” Clint said. “This is the third one!”

Natasha grabbed another knife from the knife block and cut into a fourth fish without bothering to remove the scales first. She sliced through to reveal the guts. “This one too.”

They cut open a fifth, then the sixth.

Each one contained human teeth.

Steve began pulling the teeth out from the fish, collecting them in rows on the cutting board.

“What are you gonna do with those, make a necklace?” Clint asked.

“We should take these to the police,” Natasha said.

“Goddammit,” Clint said. “This was supposed to be a chill weekend. Now I’ll have to drive all the way back to town tomorrow.”

“We’ll come with you,” Steve offered, as Natasha began pulling the teeth out as well.

“Ugh, no, you should stay here, no need for all of us to go,” Clint said. “I just wanna complain about it. I’ll go pick up some store-bought fish, too. Unless you two wanna eat these guys after this?”

“No thanks,” Natasha said mildly.

“Yeah, just veggies will be okay for tonight,” Steve agreed.

“Guys,” Natasha said after they’d torn the fish apart looking for teeth. “There are 32 teeth. That’s the exact number of teeth in an adult human mouth.”

Steve blinked at the neat rows of teeth, at the piles of scales, guts, and raw trout meat.

“What the fuck,” Clint said quietly.

“I’m getting another beer,” Natasha said. “Ew, _after_ I wash my hands.”

“Seconded,” Steve said, moving to follow her toward the sink.

The rest of the night found them out on the deck, sitting around the fire pit while Clint prepared potatoes and broccolini at the barbecue. The redwoods surrounding them towered tall and dark, the lights from the cabin here and there catching on small snatches of tawny bark or emerald needles. The crows were as present as ever, filling gaps in the treeline with their flight and silences with their cawing.

Though they managed to avoid the topic of the uneaten fish and the human teeth, Steve couldn’t help but feel that a fog of unease had settled over the evening. Whenever the leaves rustled, or a strange creaking rent the air, they’d all share a sharp intake of breath, their eyes darting around the deck, before taking nervous swigs of their beer and returning to their conversation as if nothing had happened. When the vegetables were done roasting and Clint piled them onto serving platters, Steve ducked back into the kitchen to make a quick balsamic reduction. He felt his whole body exhale as soon as he was inside.

Then he saw that the front door to the cabin was wide open. They must have failed to lock up properly and then it had blown open, he figured. A few pine needles and wood chips had blown in. He frowned, walked over, and closed it, making sure to lock it.

When Clint and Natasha joined him soon after, he thought they seemed more relaxed to be on this side of the door, too. He didn’t mention the door opening.

Many beers, toasts, and reminisces later, they decided to turn in. After hugging Clint and Natasha goodnight and hoisting his bags onto his shoulders, Steve gave himself a moment to disparage the vastness of the Bishops’ cabin before heading to his room alone.

 

_________

 

Steve blinked through a frown, his heart racing. It took him a moment to place where he was—in bed, in his bedroom in the cabin. His mouth tasted like stale beer and his head reeled when he sat up, trying to figure out why he’d awoken so suddenly.

There’d been a noise. A yell?

He got to his feet and padded out to the living room. A floor lamp was on near the sliding doors out to the deck, which were open. The fires in the fire pit and the wood stove had gone out, and the air that blew in from the open door was bitter with cold. Clint, standing on the deck, turned at the sound of Steve’s approach.

“Clint?” Steve asked, scrubbing a hand over his face. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Clint said, sounding a bit hoarse, his eyes darting around the night sky beyond the deck.

Natasha appeared from the other end of the hall. “What happened?” she asked muzzily.

“I woke up and thought I’d step out for a joint,” Clint said, his voice steadier now. “I was sitting out here, and I kept hearing these creepy noises, like someone was right outside where I was sitting. I thought it was just a deer or something, right?” He ran a nervous hand through his hair. “But then there must’ve been a gray-out or something because the lights went out for a second, and I swear I heard this voice _laughing_.”

Steve stared.

“That wouldn’t have woken us up though,” Natasha said after a moment.

“Oh, yeah.” Clint looked sheepish. “That was probably my very manly yelp of terror.”

“Fear knows no gender, Clint,” Natasha reassured him, clapping a hand on one shoulder. “C’mon inside.”

“But the joint,” Clint said, whining a little but already stepping inside and closing the sliding door with more force than strictly necessary.

“Just smoke in here,” Steve said. “We’ll air it out tomorrow and light some incense. And we’re still having fish for dinner, right?” Clint nodded. “We’ll cook inside instead of on the grill, that’ll stink up the cabin more than anything. The Bishops won’t notice.”

“Okay,” Clint agreed. “Sorry to wake you.”

“You’ll be hearing from my hangover in the morning,” Natasha called over her shoulder, already heading back to bed.

Steve followed suit, but his disquiet remained. He sat up in bed reading for another hour before his nerves settled enough for him to sleep.

The rest of the weekend at the cabin passed mostly without incident. Clint got up early on Saturday to drive the teeth into town and drop them off the sheriff’s offices. He returned to the cabin bleary-eyed and carrying four huge to-go cups of coffee from a drive-through. Natasha set him to work setting the table and assigned Steve to the eggs while she took charge of the bacon. Steve showed off his juggling, tossing three eggs from hand to hand one at a time. When he tried adding a fourth, two of the eggs ended up on the floor. Clint, who had already finished his second cup of coffee, grumbled about needing Lucky there to eat the resulting mess, but cleaned it up himself while Steve fried the surviving eggs and Natasha put on a fresh pot of coffee for Clint.

They didn’t discuss it, but by silent agreement didn’t spend any more time on the deck after it got dark. The exception—if it could be called that, it was barely an incident at all—came after they’d retired to bed for the night Saturday night. He’d nearly finished a chapter of his novel when he heard a sound like branches hitting the windows, a scratching and thudding that made it hard to concentrate. He glanced up, expecting to see the shadows of trees against the windowpane, but there was nothing. His room was on the front side of the house, he recalled, where there weren’t any trees. Just the front porch, which didn’t even have any potted plants.

It must be bugs hitting the windows, he figured. Moths attracted to his reading light, that kind of thing. He returned to his reading.

A few minutes later his eyes snapped up to the closest window. The banging and scraping was louder than ever. Steve marked his place in the book, set it down on his bedside table, and got up, wondering what he’d find at the window. It was probably crows. The crows were multiplying, he thought wildly. They were increasing in numbers so rapidly that they were filling the town and soon no one would be able to walk down the sidewalk without pushing their way through a shoulder-deep mosh pit of feathered bodies.

The absurd image did little to soothe them as he reached the window. There was nothing there.

Tentatively, he opened it, slid the screen to one side—and that was something, if it had been bugs hitting the window, they’d have been hitting the screen, too, not just the glass, that would have been a different kind of sound—and stuck his upper body through it, lighting the porch with his phone.

The blue glow of his phone illuminated nothing but the expected: the porch swing, a collection of firewood, and three pairs of boots muddy from an afternoon hike. Nothing that would make the sounds he’d been hearing. It would have been a relief to find a raccoon or possum going through their hiking boots, something ordinary to explain what was happening.

His sleep was light and disjointed, that night, and he was glad the next morning when the truck’s tires crunched over the gravel driveway, onto the road, and away from the cabin.

 

_________

 

Steve was relieved to find his apartment exactly as he left it when Clint dropped him off there early Sunday afternoon. Hoping to block out all thoughts of fish guts full of human teeth, he returned to reading Sylvana’s letters to Elettra.

The letters where they were on friendly terms seemed few and far between, and he found himself holding his breath hoping to find one. He was rooting for them from decades in the future. In one such letter, Sylvana wrote:

_You say that you are a better person when you are by my side and I say: I am always glad to have you here. I am no poet, but I think sometimes that I am some patch of land, forgotten by the gardeners meant to tend it, thirsty from too much sun, and you are a burst of rain that comes just when I most need the water._

Steve well understood the impulse for grand metaphors. In high school English, when studying Shakespeare, Steve’s class had been assigned to write a dozen Elizabethan-style sonnets. Steve had been sixteen years old and dating Peggy for a year, so several of his sonnets were about her. The central metaphor of one of them had compared Peggy to the sun. Even as a teenager, Steve had been skeptical of writers saying that looking at the woman they loved was like looking at the sun. Looking at the sun was unwise and bad for your eyes, after all. So it hadn’t been the appearance of the sun that he likened to Peggy, but the feeling of the sunrise, of the sun crowning over the horizon. She was the arrival of day, of warmth and light. She held every eye and drew the attention of flowers. Her light was so bright, it was like she had never even seen darkness.

That same maudlin part of him couldn’t help but compare Tony to the moon. The gold of quiet light. His light wasn’t so bright as to be blinding, but enough to show the crater and scars that covered him. And still he didn’t shy away entirely, he put his marks on display, mapped them, named them, joked about them—like the craters on the moon that were said to make the fanciful shapes of a rabbit or a toad or man carrying a bundle on his back.

And even when he turned away and seemed to be waning, or when he turned closer and seemed to wax and grow larger, he was never actually changing shape. He was still himself, altering the light and shadow and what could be seen by others. Like the moon, he drew things to him—the clouds, the tide. Steve himself, who opened like an evening primrose in Tony’s presence.

_After all we’ve been through, after all these years,_ Sylvana wrote in one letter, _I think we owe it to each other to try to work things out. Before something else happens._

In the next, she said, _I hate opposing you. I know you see what you’ve done to Maria. I know it’s tearing you apart. It may be too late to make things better for her, but what if she has a daughter of her own someday? Tell me, my Ellie. Tell me what I can do. What can I do to make this stop? Not just between you and me—all of it. So it never happens again, not to your daughter or hers. I know you, my dear. You’ve tried to find a way. Whatever it is, let me help you do it._

If Sylvana thought whatever was troubling her and Elettra would go on to haunt Maria and Maria’s children, Steve had to wonder if Tony, with all his superstitions, was troubled by it as well. Sometimes he thought she might have been alluding to some kind of hereditary illness, but her references to finding a solution for it didn’t seem to fit with that.

By the end of Monday night, Steve had read through all of the letters. He had no more answers than he’d started with.

He moved on to rereading texts between himself and Tony from March.

**Tony** : _benvenuta luna che mi porti fortuna!_

**Steve** : _what’s that?_

**Tony** : _i’m just welcoming the new moon_   
**Tony** : _it’s a good time to start new projects_   
**Tony** : _have new beginnings and all that_ _  
_ **Tony** : _so I’m inventing a new programming language_

**Steve** : _oh right, of course_ _  
_ **Steve** : _classic new moon ritual, I should’ve guessed_

Now May’s full moon was just a handful of days away. Steve had never asked what the full moon meant, if the new one meant new beginnings. Did that make it a time for endings? Goodbyes?

Maybe he’d be ready to leave his thoughts of Tony behind when the full moon came.

Tuesday morning he went on his morning jog, turning the subject of Sylvana and Elettra’s disagreement over in his mind. He knew there was nothing connecting them, not really, just the ties of family and the associations in his own mind, but part of him felt sure that understanding all the reasons that Peggy’s and Tony’s grandmothers had fought would help him understand why Tony had absented himself from Steve’s life now.

It looked like it would turn into a bright, sunny day, but for now it was overcast and a briny wind blew in from the ocean _—_ the perfect time of day to exercise outdoors. On his cooldown walk, he stopped to pick some dandelion greens and wild strawberries. As he knelt near a patch of dandelions next to a basketball court, a sudden, sharp cawing made him turn. In a nearby sycamore perched dozens of crows, tilting their heads and shuffling among the branches. But just beyond it, he saw someone dart away around a corner, a broad figure that reminded him irrepressibly of the one who’d been following him.

He kept looking over his shoulder the rest of his walk home; he thought it might have unnerved a woman he passed walking her elderly pug. When he approached his building, it was with an itching feeling that he’d find something else strange or unpleasant in his mailbox. When he went to check it though, it only contained more junk mail, along with a thank-you note from the family of one of the people he, Peggy, and Bucky had saved in the flood. He got one every year around the anniversary.

When he turned to the staircase, though, he saw that the markings all over the building had been expanded upon. In the center of each of the lenticular shapes was the wobbly outline of a circle.

With the addition of the circles, the images cohered. They were, Steve now saw, crude drawings of eyes.

He didn’t know if he was really being followed, he reminded himself. Who would have reason to follow him? He was probably just being paranoid, desperate to get his mind off of obsessing over Tony. And even if he was being followed, how would this graffiti be connected to that? This sort of thing wasn’t exactly unusual in his neighborhood. Usually the graffiti was on businesses or vacant buildings, though. Vandalism of occupied buildings was generally relegated to knocking over garbage cans, leaving piles of old furniture and other bulky trash, disturbing potted plants or holiday decorations, and stealing items left on porches. And he’d never seen this eye shape among the graffiti before.

Well, if something else happened, he decided, if it escalated, he’d file a police report. They’d probably laugh at him, but at least he could say he’d done something. It seemed pointless when he had no idea who was following him or what they wanted. In a best case scenario, maybe he’d get some some kind of restraining order. But when he couldn’t even see the person after him, how could such an order be enforced? And the more likely outcome was that the authorities would do nothing at all.

Still. The eyes drawn all over his home seemed to be spelling out a clear message: he was being watched.


	9. The Ocean

He took a step forward and was submerged. No part of him was untouched by the water. For now, the pressure against his skin was the same all over, a comforting uniformity brought on by being entirely engulfed. He felt clearer, a sensation like dunking his feet to wash away damp sand clinging to his ankles. His breaths were wet, fluid. He was breathing seawater, but—completely unlike when he had done so the day of the flood—it felt right. Each inhale coated his nose and throat and lungs in liquid. 

He tasted a brine so pungent and heady it made his mouth water. He wanted it in his mouth, wanted it with a hunger that flowed down to his very veins. The ocean was everywhere, yes, was with him and encompassing him and orbiting him, but it wasn’t without form. No, it was a man, kneeling, his legs apart, and as Steve watched, the man bent back his head in a languid motion, catching a sliver of moonlight that ran down his throat, his clavicle, the taut muscles of his chest, down to his hard, red cock. Yes, Steve thought: that’s what he was thirsting for, the musk of cock and the brine of the sea and a velvety weight on his tongue. 

The man’s face was pressed against his, then, he was parting Steve’s lips with his own, opening their mouths into a soft kiss. He urged Steve’s mouth wider, tangled a hand through his hair, pulled him in and turned the kiss filthier, more insistent—tongue and teeth and spit and the ocean, the ocean, always the ocean. 

The man kissed Steve like it was breathing. The warmth of it engulfed him, set his skin tingling down to his toes, and he struggled to catch up, to match his fervor. His breaths went choppy, and he was gasping, stretching for air and seawater and wetness and tongue and cock to fill him up. 

In the water, it was hard to know which way was up, and it didn’t matter. There was no gravity, no surface, no shore to reach, only water in every direction. But one way was tinted gold. It cast a warm light, the pale cream of parchment in the center and the gold of honey at the edges. That, Steve thought, was the moon, so it must be up. It was the way he was drawn to, as well, the way his body yearned to move. He kissed and was kissed, and they tugged each other in the direction of the gilt glow. In the opposite direction was a deep red, thick and crimson like crushed currants. That’s where Steve came from, he thought; but here in the water he was home. 

Steve was being manhandled, not unpleasantly—the waves rocking him, the hand in his hair. The man pulled away from Steve’s kiss-sodden mouth, a brilliant grin on his face, leaving Steve panting out needy, breathless gasps. He sank lower, hands sliding down Steve’s slick body. His mouth reached Steve’s cock. He licked the head, swirled his tongue, lapped at it until Steve arched and shuddered. His cock was heavy and flushed and dark, and he knew it belonged here, with this man, with this ocean. 

Steve reached out and, in the way of dreams, his hands found the man’s hips and his face found his groin. A burst of saliva flooded his mouth as he prepared to take the thick length of the man’s cock into his mouth. He opened and swallowed the cock down to the base. His thighs quavered and his own hips rocked against the man’s mouth, across his wicked tongue. He could feel his nose pressed against Steve’s stomach, his mouth stretched tight around his cock. Steve looked down and saw the man’s dark hair, looked up and saw the golden skin of his stomach as Steve sucked and swallowed him down. Beyond them was the red of the distant ground and the gold of the far-off moon. 

The mouth on him pulled tight and hot around him. It worked Steve relentlessly. The man’s mouth was capable and potent, matching the power of the waves. He felt inevitable, like a force of nature. 

The skin around Steve’s balls tightened, and something coiled in the base of his stomach. His body stuttered and shook and was caught by the embrace of the ocean. Its waters encompassed him, held him and his gratification. His head felt light and empty, no thought to be found but the roaring of pleasure inside him and the roaring of the waves outside him. The mouth on him swallowed against him, drank him down, just as he was swallowed by the water, pulled and tugged and dragged by it. 

Steve let the water take him. 

Then he blinked and was awake. 

The scraping feeling of a beard lingered against his skin, and his lips felt rough and well-kissed, like they’d been nibbled and teased and pressed against stubbled cheeks. He lay under his blankets, sunlight spilling out from under the edges of the quilt tacked over the big round window that hung over the head of his bed. Pale dust danced in the warm beams, moving with his breath. The air smelled tart and crisp, more like the taste of a fresh, young wine than the brine of the sea. 

Steve got to his feet, for the moment ignoring his cock, which was flushed and hard against his stomach. He felt strangely bereft, as if part of him were surprised to have awoken alone—although he’d awoken beside another person only a scant handful of times in his whole life. He nudged his makeshift curtain aside to see a sunny sky, wide and bright and cyan, unmarred by clouds. That, too, felt not quite right. He yearned for the banks of fog that rolled off the ocean, carrying an alkaline scent along with damp and gray. 

He was moving away from the window when he glanced at the street and turned back with a start. The broad, leafy maple on the sidewalk beyond was full of crows. Every branch was weighted with the shuffling, bobbing forms of the birds. Several hopped along the ground, too, pecking at crumbs on the pavement, investigating the patchy grass for scraps. 

His dream felt distant. He missed it, but it was already like a treasured, long-ago memory.

Steve scooped his phone from his nightstand and snapped a photo of the bird-studded tree and sent it to Clint. 

 

**Clint:** _ looks like Jack Skellington is trying cultural appropriation again  _ _   
_ **Clint:** _ holiday-stealing asshole, not everything needs to be spooky _

**Steve:** _ it’s June, what holiday is he supposed to be stealing?  _

**Clint:** _ hell if I know, independence day maybe?  _ _   
_ **Clint:** _ your birthday?  _

**Steve:** _ I dunno, the fourth of july might be improved by a murder of crows  _

 

With that, Steve pushed thoughts of the dream aside and set to beginning his day. 


	10. Chapter 5 - The Scarlet Witch

Steve watched his feet sink into the ground with each step as he walked across the damp sand along the surf, examined the footprints that formed beneath them. The sand was crunchy, like packed brown sugar. Each step was satisfying and crisp, gratifying as stepping on a perfect leaf and hearing it crinkle beneath your boot. Small waves lapped at his feet, each one sending a shock as icy water coated his skin and then retreated. Seagulls brayed and called to each other, then scattered as a pair of dogs raced after them. Nearby, Lucky pawed at a mussel that had washed to shore. He nibbled at the small barnacles that clung to its shell.

It had never occurred to Steve to be frightened of the ocean. The ocean wasn’t what had hurt him. That seemed akin to someone who had fallen from a skyscraper being afraid of the ground. No, he was scared of earthquakes and tsunami warnings. His teeth were set on edge by tremors and emergency weather sirens. Was that a small earthquake, or was he on the outskirts of a huge one? Was that rumble and the trembling of his picture frames from the shifting of tectonic plates, or the aftershocks of a truck hauling four heavy redwood trunks rumbling down the street outside his building?

The other things he feared weren’t so concrete. Or unusual, he thought. Wouldn’t anyone be afraid of waking up one day and finding that everything had changed? Of learning that two of the most important people in the world were gone forever? And now Tony, too, was gone.

“Earth to Steve,” Natasha said from beside him. Between his own thoughts and the white noise of the sea, he hadn’t noticed her approaching him.

“Sorry,” Steve said. “Just thinking.”

She gave him a small smile. “Do I wanna know?”

“You can probably guess,” he admitted.

“Ah.” Natasha’s mouth twisted. “It’s been almost three months.”

As far as anyone in town knew, Tony was still in his mansion, receiving deliveries and taking meetings. They’d driven not far from the Carbonell mansion on their way to the beach that very day. Steve wondered what it meant, if it meant anything, that Tony hadn’t left town, gone back to New York or halfway around the world.

“It has.” Steve dug his hands into his pockets, dug one of his feet further into the sand just to give his body something to do. He watched a swarm of crows take to flight in a wave as Lucky hurdled into where they’d been standing.

She stared at him for a moment, then sighed. “Okay, so, I wasn’t sure if I should tell you this, because I didn’t want you to start obsessing again. But since you’ve never stopped…” She chewed on a lip. “My friend from work, Shanta, she’s writing a piece on this homicide case, and she’s getting to be good friends with the detective who’s running it. Detective Prifti. Turns out, he’s also the one who got stuck with the case of our mysterious set of teeth.”

She had his attention now. He looked up from the hole he was digging with his heels to look her in the eye. He hadn’t expected to hear any news about their strange discovery and always appreciated learning about minor mysteries. But the way she had framed it, it was like it had something to do with Tony. And what could a set of teeth possibly have to do with him?

“They’re a DNA match,” Natasha began, “for Tiberius Stone.”

Steve gaped. “What? Tiberius Stone, like—”

“Yep.”

“He died in New York.”

“Yep.”

“The New York police ruled his death accidental.”

“All true. He’s buried in New York, too,” Natasha said. “Shanta said the sheriff’s department out here gave the NYPD a call, sent someone out to check his grave.”

“Check his _grave_?” Steve repeated. “What, is he supposed to be a vampire or something?”

“Well, whatever they were looking for, they didn’t find it. The grave was totally normal, undisturbed.”

“Not a sentence I thought I’d be hearing today,” Steve observed. “So they figure—what? Somewhere between the medical exam and the funeral home someone pulled all his teeth and fed them to some trout outside Nublado?”

“Well, according to Shanta’s detective friend—who says he heard it from the NYPD, so this is third-hand at this point—originally they thought it was a murder. They liked Stark for it, too, he says, but his lawyers shut it down and hushed it up, and then they had to drop the whole thing because there wasn’t enough evidence that it was even a homicide in the first place.”

Steve was processing all of this when Clint bounded up, grinning widely and panting a little. He’d been playing frisbee with a group of undergrads they’d met in the parking lot. Steve suspected that Clint had left the encounter with the phone numbers of several young women and men hoping to see him again.

“What’s all this homicide talk? This is supposed to be a birthday party!”

Steve rolled his eyes. “When you’re turning twenty seven and celebrating a week and a half after the actual date, it doesn’t need to be much of a party.”

“If you say so, man,” Clint said. He’d thrown what he had described as a “rager" a month previous for his own birthday. It had involved several kegs and a lot of loud dance music Steve didn’t recognize. Steve preferred getting together just with his close friends, and they’d picked a day they could devote entirely to the beach without having to deal with the fireworks that idiots were always setting off on Steve’s birthdate itself.

The morning had started with a lazy brunch at Steve’s favorite cafe. From there they’d headed to Mora Beach a few towns away. For most beach days, they didn’t wander far, sticking for the most part to Nublado Beach, Serpent Rock, Everton Cove, and Keyhole Beach. It was a solid 45-minute drive up to Mora from town, but it was a special spot. The walk down from the parking lot involved a short hike through redwoods, while the beach itself was a nearly-secluded cove with fine, pale sand. It always felt at least five degrees warmer at Mora than at the other beaches; today, with the sun out, one could almost contemplate swimming. Up until Steve’s mind had drifted back to Tony and Natasha had brought up the teeth, Steve had nearly forgotten about feeling like he was being followed, about the crows everywhere, about he no longer felt safe in his hometown.

“How was frisbee?” Natasha asked.

“Oh, it was excellent,” Clint said. “You know what they told me? The Scarlet Circus is coming here!”

Steve looked at him blankly. He exchanged a glance with Natasha, who shrugged.

“Really? Man, it was legendary among all the carnies,” Clint said. “The kids Barney and I worked with didn’t dream of running away and joining just any circus, they dreamed of joining the Scarlet Circus.”

“Hadn’t they already run away and joined the circus?” Natasha asked, amused.

Clint shrugged. “It was more of a day job for most of them, running booths and selling fennel cake and stuff. Carson’s isn’t exactly in the same league.”

“Right,” Natasha said, a grin forming on her face. “They can’t all be Hawkeye: Earth’s Mightiest Marksman.”

“You say that like I should be embarrassed, or something,” Clint said with a frown. They continued their walk along the surf. Lucky ran ahead of them, then back to make circles around their feet, then ahead once more. “Seriously though, Scarlet Circus, it’s supposed to be epic. I heard the craziest stories about it.”

“Why haven’t we heard of it?” Natasha asked.

“Oh man, so, they have this ridiculous mystique, I don’t even know,” Clint said. “It’s supposed to be just gorgeous, right, like, the sets are a moving art installation, they have the best acrobats and dancers in the states, the whole shebang. But they don’t allow photography or anything, they don’t have their own photos, they don’t even have a website.”

“They don’t have a website,” Steve repeated skeptically. Just ahead of them, a handful of crows fought a seagull over a large dead crab. Lucky disrupted their squabbling by pouncing into the middle of it. He picked the crab up in his teeth, tossed it around a bit, then dropped it, panting and looking at Clint as if expecting something.

“You can’t stop people from taking pictures,” Natasha said.

“Yeah, but they do somehow!” Clint insisted, reaching down to reward Lucky by scratching his rear. “Maybe they search everyone and take their phones before they let them in, I dunno, but I’m telling you, no one’s seen a single photo of this place anywhere. Most beautiful circus in the world, and it’s all promoted word of mouth. Solely guerrilla marketing.”

“Someone must’ve gotten in with a spy camera,” Natasha said.

“Or a Google Glass, or something,” Steve agreed.

“Google Glass, do you hear yourself?” Natasha scoffed. “Even Google employees don’t use Glass, Steve. But yes, someone should have made it in with some kind of wearable tech and gotten footage.”

Clint shrugged. “Well, if they did, they haven’t published the photos. There aren’t any, I’m serious.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like a shitty business model.”

“Probably, sure, yeah, it should be. But it works. They’ve been running for nearly a decade. My friend Ilda from Carson’s Carnival got recruited by them to do her fire dancing thing for them. The salary was better than Carson’s—not that that’d be hard, I mean, but it was good pay, is what I’m saying, and she got health insurance and dental and everything—and she was gonna get to do her own choreography. You don’t have that kind of setup if you’re struggling to fill seats.”

“Maybe they’re independently funded,” Natasha said.

“Maybe, fine, whatever.” Clint rolled his eyes. “What I’m saying is, it’s amazing, I’ve always wanted to go, and now it’s coming to Cuarzo!”

“Okay Clint,” Natasha said, patting him on the shoulder. “We’ll go to the circus with you.”

Clint whooped.

 

_________

 

The circus shot up overnight on a stretch of land between Nublado and San Patricio. The field had been empty the day before, but then, a week after Clint told them about the Scarlet Circus, it was there, all arched red tents and flags whipping in the wind.

Clint, Steve, and Natasha made their way to the circus on the day of the new moon. A time for new beginnings, Steve thought.

It was a bright, overcast Wednesday, and Natasha had taken the afternoon off to join them. The air filled with the smell of cinnamon-sugar and salted peanuts as they drove up to the black iron fence that surrounded the grounds, a curling, barred thing that looked too tall and sturdy to be temporary. Clint parked his battered hatchback in a yellow field of grass, directed by the attendants wearing crimson double-breasted tailcoats with gold epaulettes, braiding, and huge, diamond-shaped buttons.

“This is already so rad,” Clint said, sounding giddy.

The entrance was a narrow tent that rose in a crooked spire, at least three stories high, covered in bunting and matte red balloons that whipped in the wind. A long line wound through a velvet-roped partition but moved quickly. Soon they were inside and being sold tickets by a woman wearing a red satin gown with puffed sleeves and a massive bustle draped with tassels and ruffles. “Enjoy the circus,” she said. “No photography, please.”

When they emerged into the circus itself, Natasha raised an eyebrow. “That’s it?” she scoffed. “That’s how they enforce their no legendary photography policy? Asking nicely?”

Steve took out his phone and swiped it open. It had good reception, but when he tried to open the camera app, he got an error message. “I dunno,” he said. “Seems to be working pretty well.”

Natasha and Clint tried their phones. None of them could get their cameras to turn on, even from other apps. Everything would be working normally, but as soon as they clicked the camera icon or did anything that would activate it, the system just blanked and returned to the home screen. “Okay,” Natasha said grudgingly. “That’s a cool trick. I wonder how they programmed it.”

“Whatever, c’mon, let’s see the exhibits!” Clint said.

But they were already in one, it seemed. A trio of acrobats cartwheeled by not five feet away, weaving their way past a gaggle of bored-looking teenagers and a harried-looking man trying to hold onto the hands of his two enthusiastic toddlers. The acrobats tossed the weight of their whole bodies across the ground using only their wrists. They wore the same red coats coats as the parking lot attendant, and their coattails flapped behind them as they cut through the air. A few yards off, a man walked through the crowd with four other men stacked on top of him in a column of red, each standing on the shoulders of the other. He stopped and waved and shook hands with circus-goers waiting in line at a hot dog stand.

Other performers were spinning, swinging, and leaping through and around free-standing hoops and trapezes that dotted the grounds, their limbs propelling their bodies in corkscrews and flips, their forms flitting through the air like leaves caught in the wind. The acrobatic acts moved seamlessly through the crowd. Figures danced around knots of people and bounced off the walls of the many tents that stretched as far as Steve could see.

Clint pulled them past a group of people in red leotards walking by on their hands. “Okay,” he said. “I wanna find the stage magic show. It’s fucking legendary. I think I saw a map and some showtimes.” They wove through a marching band—Clint nearly ran into an accordion player—to the nearest information display. The next magic show— _The Illusions of the Scarlet Witch_ , the text said—was in a little under an hour, so they set out in the direction of its tent.

Their first stop on the way to the magic show proved to be an animal themed tent. The entertainers performed tricks traditionally done by animals: four people in an elephant costume balanced on a large ball; a man wearing a headdress with the face and mane of a lion leapt through a flaming hoop; someone dressed as a brown bear wearing a red vest and a small bowler hat rode a unicycle and juggled. The next tent they picked contained a troupe performing with knives: juggling them, catching them in their mouths, throwing them in the direction of performers splayed flat against large round targets.

They moved from tent to tent, display to display, performance to performance, choosing tents nearly at random. One contained a vast cuckoo clock that acted out an elaborate scene of clockwork figures. Another held a collection of bonsais with miniature tree houses built around them.

After a tent where performers ate and breathed fire, twirled fire sticks, and juggled torches among floating candles, Steve selected a final visit, a small tent that said it contained the moon. The attendant—a person dressed in an elaborate moth costume with long, fuzzy antennae—only let in one person at a time. When he was inside, Steve could see why. He barely fit inside by himself, the space otherwise being dominated by a glowing sculpture of the moon. It was at least 15 feet in diameter, and the space between it and the fabric walls of the tent was barely wide enough to stand in. Steve lingered inside for what was probably too long, examining every crater, the plains and basins and cliffs. Something tugged at him when he looked at it, something that made him crave the sound of rain hitting a roof, conjured the image of fog rolling and swirling low to the ground, called to mind dreams of being submerged and slick and hard.

It was in that tent that he began to believe that magic was real. Later, when he was at home in his apartment, he would be less sure, and by the next day, he would return to his certainty that everything he’d seen at the circus had been an illusion. But there, with the moon floating in arm’s reach, he believed.

Finally, he tore himself away and followed Clint and Natasha to the magic show tent.

They reached the tent for _The Illusions of the Scarlet Witch_ ten minutes before it was set to start. Steve had expected another large tent, a stage, tiered rows of seats. Instead it was of moderate size and contained nothing but mismatched chairs and the circusgoers sitting on them. The ground was level, with no platform or clear focal point, and the chairs were scattered throughout in no clear arrangement, facing different directions.

Natasha led them through the array of seats to a trio of leather club chairs. Beside them was a pair of velvet wingback armchairs, a chaise lounge, several barstools, and half a dozen wooden dining chairs with spindle backs. The audience chattered quietly, a relaxed murmur of voices and laughter and limbs shuffling against upholstery. Most of the seats were filled: here and there was an empty high chair, an unoccupied wicker stool, a rocking chair no one had taken. Steve recognized several people they’d gone to school with, some from high school and some from college. Clint saw someone he knew from work and went over to chat with them briefly before returning to their seats.

The light in the tent abruptly turned dim and blood-red. Soft, startled gasps filled the air, signaling the start of the show. A hush fell over the audience.

Something burst in the air, some twenty feet above their heads. It was like a silent firework, a brilliant, contained explosion of light. It sputtered out in a starburst, sending out pink and red and golden sparks. The colored motes fell in slow arcs toward the ground, winking out before they got near anyone’s heads, while the gold ones rose upward and attached themselves to the dark canvas of the tent’s ceiling. They stuck there, glittering and winking, an array of stars above them.

At last the falling, glittering motes dissipated or flickered out. The red tinge to the light in the tent receded, giving the whole scene a bright, pink glow. The dots of light near the ceiling remained. Then, with a flash like lightning renting across a dark sky, a woman appeared, her form manifesting all at once where previously there had been nothing, only the comparative dimness where the detonation of light had been. Her clothes were made of ruby-red leather, thick like hide armor over her body. She had gloves on her hands and pointed, knee-high boots, all made of the same leather. The final part of her ensemble was an angular mask that framed her face. It was something like a flat, barbed letter M, with one wide triangle pointed down her forehead to between her thin, dark brows, two more pointed up from her head like horns, and the two narrow sides curling, sharp-cornered, around her jaw. Steve couldn’t quite see how it stayed on her face.

She twirled like a leaf caught in the wind as she descended, her crimson cloak and cascade of dark curly hair billowing out behind her. She lit on a velvet armchair the same color as her outfit. Briefly, Steve wondered how they arranged that the one that matched her costume—and presumably was arranged directly below her entrance—was always free. The tip of her feet were the first to touch down, extended like a ballerina en pointe. For a moment she balanced there, held up only by the toes of one foot, a serene smile playing on her lips.

“Welcome,” she said, finally settling the flats of her feet onto the cushion of the chair. She bent her waist in a curved bow that strained the fastenings of her corset.

She raised her arms in a flourish. Flat, scarlet bursts of light shot from her fingers. A flurry of bright, red birds, butterflies, and bats took form, glowed and flapped their two-dimensional wings. They reminded Steve of paper cutouts, flitting their planar bodies through the air as if made of luminous paper. The shapes scattered across the tent, the red light they cast blotting out the stars set into the canvas far above. The bats flew high while the butterflies fluttered low, some stopping to land on patrons outstretched hands before taking a final flap of their flat wings and taking to the air once more.

The magician arced her arms and worked her fingers in a series of precise gestures—like the hand motions of a child making shadow puppets, Steve thought—and the glowing red animals fluttered and flapped up into a swarm, a flock, a murmuration. The mass of glittering shapes undulated and ducked and moved, forming the shape of a star, the arc of a rainbow, the curve of a crescent moon.

Then she beckoned to them with a single, crooked finger, and all at once they surged toward her. She leaned forward, drew back her hands, and opened her mouth in a round O. The stream of red shapes spiraled into her mouth, vanishing when they crossed the threshold of her lips like a fire breather working in reverse.

The show went on. She moved through the mismatched crowd of chairs, her feet never quite touching the ground, summoning red hummingbirds and crimson frogs and a school of candy-red koi that swam and floated among the feet of the chairs for the rest of the show. She pulled a wine-red snake out of one patron’s ear, a swarm of ladybugs from another. Her illusions all pulsed rosy and pink, sparkled like rubies.

The display reached a climax when the summoned and then dissolved a massive dragon, an undulating column of red scales that sped around the tent before dissipating into sparks. She rose into the air once more, her body rising as if lifted by a rising flood of water. When she was up near the stars she had placed on the ceiling, she turned, wrapping her cape around her in a final flourish, and vanished, the fabric of her cloak continuing to spiral and churn without her inside it until at last it twisted up into nothing.

The stars winked out, bright white light filled the tent, and the show was over.

 

_________

 

After the magic show, Clint insisted that they get food. “I need a break from all those eye-gasms,” he said. “Time to feed the other senses.”

“That was pretty special,” Natasha agreed. “How on earth do they have the budget for that?”

“Magic,” Clint said, waving a hand and wiggling his fingers. “Look, marshmallows.”

Past a band of stilt-walkers wearing Elizabethan neck ruffs was a booth selling artisan marshmallows. They were available in packages—brown paper with a window of crinkly wax paper showing the goodies inside, stamped with the circus’ name in scarlet ink—as well as individually roasted on the tips of sticks, floating in mugs of hot chocolate, or in s’mores. Natasha bought a s’more on toasted french bread with fresh honey, Clint one on a glazed donut with bacon alongside the marshmallows and milk chocolate, and Steve a more classic one on amaretti graham crackers with hazelnut spread.

“I don’t know if any of the other tents are going to top that,” Steve said, trying to hold his s’more at an angle that didn’t drip chocolate all over his hands.

“What, are you a quitter, Rogers?” Clint teased through a mouthful of marshmallow and bacon. Behind him, three crows swooped through the air, then alit on the roof of a scarlet tent beside several dozen other birds. Their dark, iridescent forms stood out starkly against the bright red.

“Let’s try this one,” Natasha said, pointing toward a disproportionately low and broad tent. Unlike the other large ones, which loomed tall and whose peaks topped five stories at least, this one wasn’t much taller than a single story at its highest point. A suit of silver armor, polished to a reflective gloss, held a sign that proclaimed it to the _House of Mirrors_.

Unsure whether food would be allowed inside, Steve gobbled the rest of his s’more, melted chocolate oozing out with each bite. He looked over to see Clint doing the same thing. Natasha’s s’more was gone, not a trace of chocolate or crumbs to be found on her. She rolled her eyes and shook her head at them both, a fond expression on her face. “You boys ready?”

“Always,” Clint said, barrelling through the curtained doorway. Steve and Natasha followed after him.

This tent first opened into a small foyer. Some of the others had, too, but none had been so empty; the tent with the knife throwers had had an anteroom where a bored-looking circus employee had rattled off a rehearsed speech about the circus’ liability in the case of injury. This one contained nothing beyond another dazzlingly polished suit of armor bearing a sign. This one warned participants that the exhibit could be disorienting and that visitors sensitive to flashing lights should avoid proceeding, but that no one had ever been lost inside.

Natasha turned to Clint and Steve with a lopsided smile and a challenge in her eyes. “Let’s do this.”

Beyond the curtain of the anteroom, it was darker still, almost pitch black. Steve was momentarily turned around but followed the sound of Clint and Natasha’s footsteps. “Still here?” he asked.

“Yep,” Clint said, while Natasha hummed an affirmative “Mmm-hmm.”

A light blinked on for a moment, catching their distorted reflections in a mirror. For a flash, their bodies oozed and stretched in the glass, then winked out again. The gloom that followed seemed darker still. Steve lifted his hand in front of his face and couldn’t see it. He held his arms in front of him, trying not to run into a wall. His feet moved one after another, trailing after the shuffling noises of Clint and Natasha walking. Using his hands to guide him, he made one turn, then another.

Dim yellow light bloomed all at once before him. He was in a passageway, every surface covered in mirrors, the reflective walls reaching all the way to the ceiling of the cent. He was also, as far as he could see, alone.

Steve jogged forward. There weren’t any branches in the pathway, just sharp twists and turns and endless corridors. “Nat?” he called. “Clint?”

“Steve?” came Natasha’s voice, muffled and faint.

“Nat?” he said again.

He thought he caught the sound of footsteps again for a moment, but then they quieted. He heard a faint curse that could have been Clint. “Where are you guys?” he said, louder than before.

There was no answer.

Resigning himself to finishing the exhibit alone, he continued on, keeping an eye out for paths that branched out from the main hall as he did so, finding none. He wondered whether it might be better or quicker to go back to the entrance and wait for his friends outside, but decided to keep moving forward in case he ran into them on the way. Plus, he wanted to see what else the hall of mirrors had to offer.

He pulled out his phone and turned the screen on. It glowed solid white for a moment, then flicked off. He tapped the screen. There was no response. He pressed hard on the power button, which usually made the phone reboot. Still nothing happened. He wondered if it was part of the experience of this tent, like how the camera didn’t work anywhere on the grounds. He slipped it back in his pocket.

His reflection changed slowly as he walked on, morphing from regular mirrors to some that elongated and narrowed his body, then ones that crushed and widened it. White fog breathed through the halls, clinging to the ground and licking at his heels. He couldn’t see where it was coming from; there were no visible openings in the ground or the mirrors for a smoke machine.

The light blinked off abruptly. Extending his arms to navigate blindly once more, he trekked onward.

The sound of glass shattering stopped him in his tracks. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and he willed the light to return. He couldn’t tell how far away the sound had come from; it had rent the air abruptly and seemed to have happened both behind him and in front of him.

For a while he stood there, unseeing, the only sound his own breath and the blood rushing in his ears.

The soft tap of foot a hitting the ground cut through the near-silence. For a moment, there was nothing—then the step sounded again. Then once more. It continued on in an easy rhythm, the cadence of someone walking.

“Clint?” Steve said. “Nat? That you?”

There was no answer. The sound of footsteps grew closer.

“Whoever’s coming, I think there’s broken glass,” Steve called out. The footsteps didn’t pause.

The golden light returned as suddenly as it had gone. There was no glass on the ground, and no one in sight but himself and his reflection echoed endlessly before and behind him. He set off once more, the patter of another pair of feet echoing behind him.

The mirrors began to fragment as he walked further, his reflection duplicating in section after section, like the compound eyes of a fly. The shapes were jagged, disconnecting the images of his form at odd angles. In one section, the fragments were shaped so that each of his reflections was cut off at a joint, severing him at the elbow, the knee, the wrist, the neck.

Steve walked on. The sound of footsteps followed him. The mirrors continued to splinter. Now one shard showed an elongated reflection, another a squashed one, still another a reflection of a reflection so he was doubled and tripled in an endless line. His reflected feet moved in the glass in an unending synchronized march, broken up only by the pale, curling fog.

Something dark was fluttering in one of his reflections that wasn’t in the others. Impulsively, Steve looked over his shoulder at where the movement would be if it existed physically. There was nothing there.

He walked on, a knot of unease congealing in the pit of his stomach. He’d been in halls of mirrors a couple of times before. In the past, he’d found them pretty straightforward: a mirrored maze that made you look thinner or broader or cast your reflection in an unexpected place. After the exhibits he’d seen earlier, he’d expected something similar, perhaps on a larger scale with unusual sculptures or decorations, maybe with hidden doors or puzzles to solve, or with performers and dancers wandering through with the visitors.

This was not that. The sound of footsteps continued without pause. His reflection multiplied as the mirrors split into narrower slivers that bent and turned off of the walls in branchlike curves and boneless angles, so that when he glanced toward the wall his own head seemed to turn to look at him.

The dark flutter moved behind his reflection once more, accompanied by a disruption in the still air and the flapping of wings. This time he made out the form of a crow in the splintered mirror, though there was, as ever, nothing in the corridor beside him. He walked on and on, second-guessing his decision not to double back. The hallways grew narrower, and the mirrors grew more and more twisted, undulating in organic shapes like molten metal, twisting his reflection into slices and knots. Some of the shapes coalesced into the form of limbs: mirrored hands extending, reaching, grasping from the walls, seeming to move as his reflection arced across them.

The mirrors had a new trick, now, a way of duplicating his image into a figure that seemed to lag behind his own movements. A jut of mirror in the shape of an elbow caught a reflection of his shoulders, and behind it was another set of shoulders, moving at an ever-so-slightly faster speed. A speed, he realized, that matched that of the footsteps.

He picked up his pace, pushing aside all thoughts of why he did so.

Another crow moved through the air in the many shards of his reflection, accompanied by a matching rustle of feathers and beating of wings. Then another joined it, its dark silhouette diving toward him and then slowing down to fly alongside the first.

The walls of the corridors grew closer together still. He could no longer walk by the grasping, bubbling forms that surged out of the mirrors without brushing into them. A protrusion shaped like a melting hand grazed the fabric his shirt as he passed.

A third crow appeared in his reflections. In the splintered mirrors, his face repeated like the planes of color inside a kaleidoscope. He caught his own gaze in a sliver-thin shard of mirror, the glass as slender as the line of a day-old moon. One fragment of mirror showed his cheek and one eye, another an upside-down image of his profile, still one more the edge of his shoulder and the trio of crows.

How did the rhyme go? _One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a funeral…_

He was growing tired of the mirrors, of how the walls leaned in toward him, of the low, dark ceiling. The glass, the footsteps, the beating of wings, all seemed to press into him. The turns in the hallways grew more frequent, a left, a left, then another left, a curve so sharp he was sure he was doubling back, a right, another right, a right again.

In the reflection, another figure walked behind him, matching the tempo of the second set of footsteps. He paused, staring at a large patch of mirror, and the second figure kept walking for a moment before it stilled. It seemed to lean into him, and he was sure he felt someone pressing against him, but there was no one there, there was nothing—

The lights winked out once more.

Someone laughed, high and sharp and wild. It lapsed into a giggle, then picked up again, growing in volume, intercut by intermittent gasps, as if the person laughing was struggling to catch their breath against the overwhelming mirth. It went on and on, an unending cackle that seemed to come from all directions.

The light returned. The laughter continued, a harsh, arhythmic sound that rattled against the inside of Steve’s head.

In his reflection, crows flitted in an orbit around him. He counted seven of them. They wove through the air, their flightpaths surrounded him, flying in spirals, the sound of their wings and low caws overpowered by the increasingly manic laughter. Even though there was nothing there with him in the corridor—and he looked, he couldn’t help himself, the crows were repeated in every fragmented reflection, every splinter of mirror—he could feel the air moving where their wings moved around him.

He thought of the nursery rhyme once more: _One for sorrow, Two for mirth, Three for a funeral, Four for birth, Five for heaven, Six for hell, Seven for the devil—_

In the mirror, a man stepped out from the shadows, his mouth twisted in an open-mouth grimace that moved with the ever louder sound of laughter. The man stepped closer and closer until he was standing right behind Steve, the stuttering, high-pitched laughter now right in his ear. Steve felt warm breath against his neck, was sure he felt a puff of air in the shell of his ear as the cackle angled directly into it. Steve winced at the sound and looked reflexively behind him. Still there was nothing, nothing but the mirrors and the reflections showing the man and the crows and the beating of wings and that _laughter_ , continuing on and on, snorting and bursting and _coming from right next to his face—_

The corridor abruptly fell into darkness. At last the laugh began to die out, but the breath was still right there, so close against his skin, giving him a chill everywhere else, making his skin crawl, but at least it the laughter was stopping, he couldn’t bear for the awful sound to go on any more, especially not in this pitch black, with the walls of the corridors closing in, with the sounds of the crows—the devil’s seven crows—flitting close enough to graze his skin with their pinion feathers.

The laughter finally ended, leaving only the loud breath that huffed out completely at odds with the rhythm of Steve’s own pulse.

He felt cold fingers grip his wrist. “Got you,” said a low, pleased voice against his ear.

Steve wrenched his hand free and ran.

The laughter bubbled up once more, now coming clearly from behind him. The sound of footsteps was back, too, but faster now—the beat of running feet hitting the ground, the feet of the other man in the mirrors, the feet of the person who laughed and laughed and laughed and breathed in his ear and grabbed his wrist.

The lights fluttered on again. Still Steve ran. He glanced behind him and was relieved to find nothing—nothing in the corridor, that is, because in the mirror, the figure was right there, keeping pace with him. The man was slightly taller than Steve, his hair nearly the same dishwater blond but a little longer. He had a strong jaw, dark with stubble and deformed with the contortions of his unending laughter. The crows were focused on the other man, now, swooping toward him with their talons out, diving at his body with loud calls that for brief, welcome seconds overtook the sound of laughter.

The crows passed through him as if he weren’t there. Still, the man frowned at them, swatted at them with large, heavy hands. While their attacks met only air, his knocked into the birds, pushing one off course, knocking a feather from the wing of another. Still they pressed in on him, and in his distraction, his gait began to slow, the laughter began to taper off, interrupted by irritated grunts.

Steve kept running. In the mirrors, the man and the crows followed him.

The man looked familiar. Steve had seen his face in a photograph, he was sure.

The lights cut out once more. Steve kept running.

Suddenly, he realized he had run into a heavy piece of velvet. His arms were tangled in it, and he fought to extricate himself, to move the fabric away. At last he pulled himself free, and he burst into the sun.

He stood outside the tent for a moment, panting. In front of him, circusgoers ambled among the tents, interspersed with stilt walkers and dancers.

He looked behind him. The curtain leading out of the house of mirrors remained motionless.

That, Steve reflected, had not been his idea of a good time.

He stepped away from the big tent, both trying to get some distance from it and to see if he could catch sight of Clint or Natasha. They were nowhere to be seen.

People milled from one crimson tent to another, chatting and walking, unaware of the speed of Steve’s heartbeat, of the blood rushing in his ears, of the adrenaline still coursing through him and setting him on edge.

He pulled his phone from his pocket. It was working normally now, with strong reception. He called Clint, then Natasha, but both calls went straight to voicemail. He shot off a quick text to the both, saying, _Hey, I’m out of the house of mirrors tent, where are you?_

The air was thick with the smell of fried dough and the gregarious sounds of the crowd. Performers wandered among the throng: stilt walkers in crimson double-breasted jackets and oversized top hats; fire breathers and fire eaters catching and using torches tossed their way from a pair of juggling unicyclers; acrobats cartwheeling and walking on their hands among the visitors. Still more performers balanced and flipped and dove their way across the tightropes, trapezes, and slack ropes that were suspended from the top of one pointed tent to another.

Steve’s eye caught on a man in an apple-red costume decorated with cobalt spiderwebs. He was stilt-walking with all four of his limbs, using a set of eight stilts that he tossed and switched out as he made his way down the path. The stilts had several joints in them, each piece at a slight angle to another, giving each stilt as a whole a slow curve to it, like the limbs of an orb weaver spider. Each joint was a little springy, giving the performer some bounce and give, the separate pieces rocking into each other as the performer moved. But the legs still didn’t bend far enough to lift over the heads or arms of people in the crowd, so the performer had to swing them around anyone who got in his way, or, more often, let go of a stilt, toss it forward, and catch it on his next movement. It was like he was juggling the stilt-legs with his hands and feet, crab-walking smoothly around passersby.

As if noticing Steve’s interest, the spider-man made his way toward where Steve stood watching. When he reached him, the performer hovered for a moment on his slightly bouncing stilts, then somersaulted off of them. He landed on all fours, then shot an arm out to catch the stilts before they fell.

“Um, hey,” said the spider-man. Steve had assumed he was a slight adult, someone with a small build suited to gymnastic feats, but after he spoke, he realized the person in front of him could be no older than 14.

“Hi,” Steve said.

The kid slipped a red-gloved hand into a pocket of his costume, hidden by a seam of deep blue embroidery. “So, Ms. Maximoff asked me to give this to you,” he said, proffering the slip of paper he’d removed. “She said it’s okay to come early.”

Steve took the paper. It was thick and the same scarlet as the fabric of the tents. Calligraphy-styled text was embossed in white ink, indicating it was a coupon for a free psychic reading. “What—” Steve started to say, but when he looked up, the spidery figure was already back aloft on his set of eight stilts, making his way in the opposite direction.

Steve looked at the coupon again. It must be some kind of promotional thing. One person gets a free reading and likes it, then encourages their friends to get one, too. First he’d have to find his friends again, he thought wryly.

The appointment was for 2 PM. It was just a quarter-till now. Steve examined a framed map of the grounds and saw that the psychic’s tent wasn’t far from where he was standing.

Well, he may as well occupy himself with something until he could track down Nat and Clint again, Steve figured. He made his way toward the indicated tent.

This structure was smaller than the others, the heavy fabric patterned in stripes, checkers, and diamond patterns of various scarlets, maroons, and wine-reds. Crimson smoke rose from the pointed top in a steady flow. The entrance was covered by a weighty velvet curtain, a framed sign hanging over it on a delicate chain. As Steve approached it, he heard voices from inside the tent. He stood by the entrance tentatively, wondering what to do.

The sign said: _Session in progress. Please wait outside for next appointment._

A woman’s voice was speaking. “—doesn’t have to mean that,” Steve caught her saying. “My husband will tell you the same thing.”

“Yeah, your opinion is noted,” grumbled a man’s voice. Steve started; it sounded just like Tony’s. What would Tony be doing here? As far as Steve knew, he hadn’t taken to leaving the mansion any more frequently in recent months.

“Are you really going to try your luck making a deal with that psycho?” the woman asked, a sigh in her voice.

“I don’t have much choice, do I?” The man’s voice was lower now, too quiet for Steve to tell for sure if it was really Tony. And what if it was? Was Steve going to barge in there and demand to talk to him? “God, I hate magic,” he said at full volume, and yes, that was definitely Tony.

The woman laughed, a sparkling, tinkling sound. “You always say that,” she said fondly. “I wish—”

“Don’t you dare!” Tony cut her off abruptly, but there was laughter in his words.

“Alright, alright, I won’t meddle further. I’m glad you stopped by. It’s good to see you again.”

“You too, Wanda,” Tony said, and Steve could hear the smile in his voice. “Thanks for the help.”

There was the sound of footsteps and rustling fabric, then, and before Steve’s eyes, the text on the sign changed to: _Enter_.

Steve pushed the curtain aside and rushed in, barely sparing a moment to contemplate how the sign changed—it must be some sort of e-ink or other digital trick. The woman from the stage magic show stood at one end, beside another curtained doorway. The fabric was still swaying. “Go ahead and go after him,” the woman said.

Not stopping to think, Steve crossed the tent, swept the curtain aside, and barreled outside.

The path in front of him was deserted. He found only an open space of the circus grounds, then the black iron fencing that enclosed it.

Steve jogged around the tent, wove through a few that were close by. He passed a few other patrons, but there was no sign of Tony. He must have gone into another tent, and Steve had no way to guess which one.

Finally he returned to the psychic’s tent. The woman—Wanda Maximoff, presumably—was seated now, in a wicker peacock chair. The round back fanned out from her like a throne. She gave him a small smile. “I knew you’d have to see for yourself that he was really gone,” she said. “Would you like some tea?” She indicated a porcelain tea set, glazed in creamy white with red coral designs painted on it.

“Sure,” Steve said slowly.

“Have a seat.” She indicated a plush, Victorian-style armchair with carved wood accents.

Steve sat. He watched as she bent over the low glass table and set to pouring tea. Her pointed mask was absent now, letting the curls of her dark hair fall around and partially obscure her face. She’d shed her cloak and gloves, too, leaving her in a scarlet leather corset and matching leather pants. The interior of the tent was stuffed with wooden furniture, all intricately carved. Some designs seemed to be made up of writing or symbols of some kind, others showed patterned vines or frolicking animals. The only light came from the flames of red wax candles that were scattered over every surface—and some that hung from the ceiling by some invisible thread.

Wanda finished preparing the tea and sat back with a rustle of wicker and leather. “I’m afraid I don’t have a traditional reading for you,” she said. She took a sip of her tea. “Try it, it’s very good.” The small smile was back.

Obediently, Steve reached for his teacup and saucer. It was, in fact, very good. Like nearly everything else in the room, it was a deep, swirling red. He couldn’t quite identify the flavor—it was a bit like rose hip tea, but fruitier and stronger. “It’s nice,” he said lamely.

“My name is Wanda, as I think you’ve gathered. You must have a lot of questions, Steve,” she said, her voice gentle. “Would you like to start with that?”

“How do you know Tony?”

Wanda’s smile widened, showing bright white teeth. Her lipstick, Steve noted, was the color of blood. “We met years and years ago. We’ve done some work together, too. He helped with the setup of the circus, in fact.”

That wasn’t a full answer, of course, but it did make some sense. Tony would have no trouble making something like the sign on the outside of the tent, something that looked like paint on wood but was really a digital image. Or the things Steve had seen in the house of mirrors, which had to be tricks using cameras and computer editing to superimpose the man and the birds onto the reflections. The holograms Steve had seen in Tony’s labs were mostly transparent and tinted blue or green, but maybe in collaboration with the circus and old stage magic methods they’d been able to create the effects of Wanda’s show from earlier that day.

“Is that how you knew my name?”

“He didn’t mention you by name, no.”

“But that’s why you sent me this coupon.”

Wanda tilted her head. “In a manner of speaking, I suppose so. His timing was certainly the reason I gave you the 2 o’clock slot. I thought you might be more interested in what I have to say knowing that we have a friend in common.”

A friend. “So it was a social call,” Steve said.

“Yes and no.” Wanda set her teacup on a bronze stool with spindly legs and webbed feet. “He wanted my help with something. It was a bit beyond my expertise, so I referred him to someone who may be able to do more. Although,” she frowned. “I advised him not to bother.”

“What did he need help with?”

“Unfortunately, I promised him I wouldn’t say. Aren’t you going to ask me what else I advised him on?”

“Okay, sure. What else did you advise him on?”

“You, of course. I told him to talk to you and tell you everything.”

Steve stared at her. “What do you expect me to say to that?”

“You’re growing restless. Understandable. Please, listen to me. There’s something out there, and it’s after you. Maybe both of you. I know you won’t believe me, especially since I can’t give you many details. But Tony knows it’s there, too. It’s one of the things he wanted my help with. To banish it, to return this evil to where it belongs.”

The hair on the back of Steve’s neck prickled. Part of him believed her, even though it sounded ludicrous. He couldn’t figure out what she would have to gain by saying all of this to him, either. “What kind of something?”

“What you saw in the house of mirrors, for one thing,” she replied. At Steve’s stunned expression she smiled a little and added, “What you experienced was not how that attraction was designed to go.”

“So, is that why Tony ran away?” Steve asked, taking all this in. “From me? Because of this evil something.” If Wanda wanted to trick him somehow, he supposed it was possible she could have set up the house of mirrors to try to frighten him—though what motive she could possibly have was mysterious to him. And she really did seem concerned for Tony. If Tony believed in this stuff, that could at least explain some of what was going through his head. And that’s what Steve was hoping for, right? Closure. Some explanation.

“It is…” she waved a hand, the jewels of the rings on her fingers glinting in the candlelight. “It is connected to the same forces that led him to believe disappearing from your life would keep you safe. They are not one and the same. And as I have said, I disagree with his conclusions.”

“But you won’t tell me what this _something_ after us is.” Steve didn’t bother trying to hide the frustration from his voice.

“It is part of a secret that’s not mine to tell. But Steve.” She fixed him with a long look. “I think you already know what is following you. You just aren’t ready for that to make sense to you yet. All I can do for now is tell you to take care. There is help for you if you look for it. And Tony has already done what he can to protect you.”

“What, by leaving me?” Steve spat. “By not telling me anything?”

“I was referring to, among other things, the pendant you’re wearing.”

Steve’s hand snapped unconsciously to the _lunula_ hanging around his neck. It was hidden under his clothes, she couldn’t have seen it. He lowered his hand self-consciously. “How is jewelry supposed to help, exactly?”

“Symbols have power,” she replied, seemingly unruffled by his increasing impatience. “You know that.”

The curtain at the back moved, and a slender man in a blue-green costume and red body paint came through. He reached down with a willowy arm and Wanda took his hand. “It’s time to prepare for the next show,” he said softly. His hand, Steve noticed, was painted red as well, the same crimson as the tents and the costumes of nearly everyone else.

Wanda got to her feet and straightened her outfit. “Thank you, my dear.” None of the body paint from the new visitor seemed to have gotten anywhere on her skin. In fact, now that Steve thought of it, the paint was strangely matte and smooth, of a much higher quality than any body paint he’d seen up close before.

She turned to Steve. “Thank you for listening to me. I wish for all of this to make sense soon. Stay as long as you like. You will find your friends shortly.”

With that, Wanda and the red-painted man left the tent.

Steve sat for a moment, finishing his tea and trying to make sense of what had just happened. It would certainly make for a story to tell Clint and Natasha.

With that thought, he got to his feet and pushed through the curtain at the front of the tent. As he stepped onto the pavement beyond, he saw a swarm of crows, blue jays, seagulls, and pigeons pecking at the ground. They parted as he moved through them, hopping to make way for him, but none took flight. Instead they continued bobbing and pecking at the ground. He watched them hop and bicker, bouncing along and snatching at each other intermittently.

“Steve!” a yell from beyond the group of birds caught his attention. He followed the sound to see Clint jogging toward him, Natasha at his side. “There you are!” Clint called.

The crows finally took wing as Clint and Natasha approached them, but they didn’t go far. Instead, they landed on the roofs of the tents, continuing their squawking and bobbing from there.

“You ready to get out of here?” Natasha asked.

“Yes,” Steve said firmly. “Let’s go.”

 

_________

 

The walk back through the circus and through the makeshift parking lot to Clint’s car was subdued. It was only once they’d climbed in that the silence was broken.

“That house of mirrors,” Steve said. “Was fucking weird.”

“I don’t know, I love being tricked into going to a haunted maze in the middle of July,” Natasha said.

“They should update the warning sign at the entrance,” Clint complained.

“That was the weirdest thing, actually,” Nat said.

“Weirder than the creepy guy?” Steve asked.

“What creepy guy?” Natasha said sharply.

“In the mirrors,” Steve said, frowning. “He was following me. Him and these crows. You didn’t have the creepy blond guy?”

“No,” Natasha said after a moment. “No creepy blond guy. Or crows. Just lights going on and off and some strange sounds. It was the anticipation that got me. Give me a straight fight any day.”

“No blond dude for me either,” Clint said. “Sounds like Nat and I had the softcore version.”

“Oh, well, there _was_ the Joker laugh,” Natasha said thoughtfully. “Yeah, _that_ was as bad as the anticipation.”

“Right!” Clint exclaimed. “Whoever they got to do the voice acting on that could give Mark Hamill a run for his money.”

“It just went on so _long_ ,” Natasha agreed. “The laughing, I mean. Though the maze did, too. That’s what I was saying they should warn about. Someone was actually following you, Steve?”

“Just in the mirrors,” Steve repeated, though that wasn’t what it had felt like at the time. Now though, in the glaring light of the overcast sky and the fields streaming by in the car windows, it felt strange to say so. “He was the one laughing.”

Clint shuddered dramatically. “Ugh. No thank you.”

Steve almost mentioned that he had felt the man’s breath on him, felt it when he grabbed him by the wrist. It wasn’t that it felt less real now. If anything, away from the endless red tents and spellbinding exhibits, it felt more disturbing. He wasn’t worried that Clint and Natasha wouldn’t believe him, exactly, but that they might think he imagined it, or distorted it, and wonder why _that_ was what he’d imagined, or maybe they would believe him, and worry about him, might think he wasn’t safe. Which he was, it had just been an image in a mirror. There hadn’t really been anyone there; there couldn’t have been.

“I wonder how they did it,” Steve mused aloud. “It must be like how they did the magic show. Holograms, maybe?”

“Holograms aren’t that cool, dude,” Clint said.

“Tony’s are,” Steve said. “Actually,” he went on, hoping to stymy complaints about his inability to move on. “When I was waiting for you two after the hall of mirrors, I got this coupon for a psychic reading.”

“Oh yeah?” Clint said. “Did you go?”

“Yeah.”

“Well? Is there a tall, dark, handsome stranger in your future?” Clint asked.

“I mean, I hope so,” Steve said. “But she didn’t mention one. We talked about Tony.”

“Steve,” Natasha sighed.

“No, I mean,” Steve hastened to correct her. “She brought him up. Actually, he was there just before I had my appointment, I overheard them. He’s a friend of hers.”

That got Natasha’s attention. “Really.”

“Yeah.” Steve was hesitant, again, to explain further. But this wasn’t like the laughing man. It didn’t matter whether psychic powers were real or not, Wanda was a friend of Tony’s, and might have some idea of what was going on with him. If she said he was in danger, Steve believed her. Or at least, believed that Tony believed it, that he was afraid of something. “She said there’s something after him.”

Clint scoffed. “How incredibly vague and unsettling.”

“I think maybe it’s part of why Tony disappeared on me,” Steve said. “If he thinks this evil thing is chasing him.”

“He left you to protect you,” Natasha said, as if trying it out. “He’s an idiot, if he thought that would work.”

“Yeah,” Clint agreed. “Has he met you?”

“Are you sure this psychic woman isn’t just trying to get you to rush in to Tony’s rescue? Because that’s how she’d make it happen.”

Steve tried not to think how much Tony would resent that kind of meddling. “What would she get out of that?”

“Maybe Tony won’t shut up about you, either,” Clint said. “And she’s running out of ways to shut him up.”

“Hey,” Steve said. “I shut up about him sometimes.”

“Sure, dude.”

“Well, whatever she’s talking about, or whatever mystical lens she’s looking at it through, it doesn’t sound good,” Natasha said. “If she’s Tony’s friend, and she says she’s worried something’s after him, that’s not nothing. I’ll ask around at work, see if anyone knows what’s going on with him.”

“You think it’s something to do with his work?” Steve asked, thinking of all the prototypes he’d seen Tony working on, innovations beyond what any of his competitors were putting out.

“Or someone blames him for Stone’s death,” Natasha said. “There’s definitely someone trying to stir up _something_ about Stone. Just can’t figure out what the payoff is supposed to be.”

Steve considered this. “You think someone planted those teeth in those fish?”

“Well, how else did they get there? Every tooth from his adult mouth, in just those fish. It’s a statistical impossibility,” Natasha said.

“Then they hid in the lake and stuck those specific fish on our hooks,” Clint said. Steve could see the skeptical quirk of his eyebrow in the rearview mirror.

“It’s only a working concept,” Natasha said loftily, though her mouth quirked into the start of a smile. “I’ll let you know what I hear, Steve.”

Steve wasn’t sure whether he wanted her to find anything, or nothing at all.


	11. The Ocean

He was underwater. He was inhaling water. But he knew he wasn’t drowning. He was done drowning. He was was done dying. 

Blood rushed in his ears, coursing with the beat of waves hitting the shore. The skin under his hands was soft and smooth, but the softness of liquid, silky and fluid. It was the dead of night and the ocean reached up to the top of the sky, capturing the full, round moon in its embrace. Sorrow and doubt and guilt were washed away until there was only his body. His cock was plump and pink and surrounded by the tight, perfect flow of water. The water gave him everything he needed. 

A man was there too, his eyes building and cresting and crashing like waves, and it was Tony, of course it was Tony, it had always been him, in the ocean, in the moon, his movements liquid and bright and golden. Steve reached for him through the crush of the water. Tony was a beacon, a lighthouse guiding him. Their bodies met like the churning pewter line of the horizon against the silver gray of the sky. Everything was red and gold and wet, wet, dripping wet. 

Their breath was the tide, in and out, waves rising and falling. The ocean was a sweet, heady squeeze around his cock, and then it was Tony he was thrusting against, Tony’s ample, ripe rear. Steve rocked into him, rubbing his cock along the crease of his ass, feeling the give and bounce of his cheeks. He pushed inside, felt that sweet, warm moment of penetration, of sliding inside so slick and smooth. Tony was throbbing and tight around him, calling out and clenching and shuddering around him. 

He was utterly surrounded, by Tony, by the sea, by skin and brine and water. No part of him was untouched. Their hands were tangled together. He loved Tony’s hands, rough with calluses, deft and sure. Tony’s hands shaped worlds out of light and shadow, whether out of the bright buzz of his holograms or the smudged shadows of his hand puppets, and now they were entwined with Steve’s, his to hold. 

The moon was a full, golden presence, hanging behind Tony’s tilted head like a halo in a medieval painting. It was so full and ripe, surely it was about to fall, like heavy fruit from a branch. Steve was falling, of that he was sure, melting and molten. He fell, deeper and deeper. Tony was gasping and moaning under him, rocking with each thrust Steve made into him. He buried his cock deeper still, feeling breathless and tingling as his orgasm approached. 

We awoke as he spilled, shivers of pleasure breaking over him. He lay in his bed, sunlight edging around the hem of the quilt that hung over his window. The calls and caws of crows sounded from outside. 

After the flood and waking from the coma, Steve had spent some months on antidepressants. They’d helped him stabilize and find the energy to work through the worst of his grief and guilt. He’d tapered off of them when he’d gone back to school and found a rhythm in his studies and his friendship with Clint and Natasha. He hadn’t had much in the way of side effects, other than the increased vividness of his dreams; his sleep wasn’t impacted, nor any of his physical health, and if his sex drive had lessened, he certainly couldn’t tell, given that he couldn’t even conceive of being with anyone other than Peggy for a whole year after she’d passed.  

When he’d been on the medication, he woke up every morning to his brain buzzing with a detailed memory of dream after elaborate dream. They’d felt important and meaningful and stayed with him all day. He’d taken to writing down what images stuck with him the most, thinking he’d return to his notes to find the makings of a great Magritte painting or David Lynch story, only to find strings of boring nonsense. 

The memories of these dreams about the ocean, though, were different. They stayed with him, but not in the manic, suggestive way his dreams had when he’d been medicated. Instead, as he went about his day, showering and rinsing the come off his chest, jogging, drawing, the dreams of the ocean hovered, present and momentous, brushing against his skin with every movement he made. 

 


	12. Chapter 6 - The Thaumaturgist

Autumn dawned crisp as a chorus hitting a golden note and filling a chapel on Sunday morning. The sun hung heavy and honey-yellow in a sky still hazy with smoke from nearby wildfires. The black forms of crows remained omnipresent, now peeking through mustard and marmalade colored leaves instead of green ones.

Steve couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being followed. Even during the daytime, when he went out on errands or to pick up Lucky and there were plenty of other people around town, he would catch glimpses of someone trailing behind him. When he’d turn to look, there would be no one, nothing but the usual foot traffic in Old Town. Once, he thought he saw a broad figure dart behind a building. He started accepting rides home from Clint more often, and letting Natasha borrow a car from her coworkers to pick him up other times. After late nights at the Twa Corbies, he either went home with Clint or Natasha or had one of them crash with him at his apartment.

Still. The eyes were mostly cleaned off of his building—though some still remained on his landing and by his door—and no more appeared. Nor did he receive any other strange objects in his mailbox.

He was much more worried about Tony.

It had been almost as many months since he’d seen Tony as they’d known each other in the first place, and Steve liked to think that he was obsessing less about the why of it all. Whatever else, he trusted Tony, and if Tony thought it wasn’t a good idea for him to be with Steve, well, Steve had to accept that.

But now he had what Wanda said circling in his mind. _Are you really going to try your luck making a deal with that psycho?_ she’d asked Tony. Steve didn’t care for the sound of that.

And they’d spoken of magic. Steve hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. Wanda was a stage magician at a circus, after all. But after months of ruminating over Sylvana’s letters to Elettra, of thinking about Tony’s superstitious side—a side he tried to downplay, to turn into a joke, because he was an engineer, a scientist, after all—he wondered if Tony was getting into a deal with some kind of scam artist. He’d hoped that Natasha’s peek into his life would turn up some clue, something for Steve to look into or someone for him to talk to, but so far there was nothing.

_There’s something out there, and it’s after you. Maybe both of you. It’s one of the things he wanted my help with. To banish it, to return this evil to where it belongs._

If Tony really believed that some supernatural evil was pursuing Steve and himself, he would certainly cut himself off from Steve to try to spare him from it.

It was just all so far-fetched. It was one thing to think that smelling a skunk brought good luck for parking in Berkeley, repeating something your grandmother taught you about not taking a bath when you were sick, or touching iron after speaking of morbid topics and tempting fate. It was another to end a friendship, a blossoming romance, for fear of being pursued by some metaphysical force or being. And Tony was so brash and brave and bold, it was hard to picture him being cowed by something so intangible.

Still. As Natasha and Clint liked to remind him, how well did he really know Tony? Very well, actually, he’d liked to think. But it had really only been a few months. Tony’s last partner had died suddenly. It was ostensibly the reason he’d moved back to Nublado and withdrawn from the public eye. It had certainly upset him too much to speak about much. Steve had been proud of Tony, in a way, for giving up drinking, but judging by how he talked about his past, it was something of a drastic personality change.

Steve’s thoughts of Tony were often accompanied by scrolling through their old text message conversations. Among their plans for meeting up and updates about how their days were going were photos from Tony of his cats or projects in his workshop and ones from Steve of plants he’d found or drawings he’d been working on. Once in April Tony had sent Steve a photo of an RV with the name “Pusher” written on the back in a cheery typeface. _Speaks for itself_ , had been Tony’s commentary. The RV had a spare tire on the back with a cover decorated by an image of a smiling sun wearing sunglasses and the words _Have a nice life!_

Steve hoped Tony was having a nice life, though somehow, he doubted it.

At the beginning of October, Steve received an email that he hoped would offer some answers.

_Dear Mr. Steven Rogers,_

_It has recently come to my attention that you have spent a good deal of time in the company of our Chief Engineering Officer, Tony Stark, including in some of his workspaces where confidential prototypes may have been present. Although, due to an oversight on our part, you were not presented with nondisclosure paperwork prior to being invited into these spaces, please be advised that—_ and here it lapsed into some legal terminology that Steve skimmed over, but the gist of which was clearly that, his signature on NDAs or no, he was subject to lawsuit if he revealed any trade secrets or products in development. The letter continued from there, however:

_I have spoken to Mr. Stark on the matter and he assures me that his trust in you is not misplaced. I hope that you will prove this to be true by signing the discussed nondisclosure forms promptly. It happens that I will be visiting Cuarzo County starting on Sunday, October 6, and departing on October 12. I would appreciate going over the forms with you in person. It is my hope that speaking together will alleviate concerns that we both share—or perhaps bring to light more reasons for worry, knowing Mr. Stark, but some clarity is still to be hoped for._

_Sincerely,_

_Virginia Potts-Hogan_

_Chief Executive Officer, Stark Enterprises_

Steve was quite sure that CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies didn’t usually handle these sorts of things themselves, let alone offer to go over them in person.

Steve replied promptly and they made plans to meet with Virginia “please, call me Pepper” Potts-Hogan the following Wednesday.

 

_________

 

The afternoon of the appointed day arrived brisk and bright, and Steve didn’t bother finding a ride for the short distance to the cafe they’d discussed.

Halloween decorations were out in full force. Porches were stacked with pumpkins of every size and every hue of orange. Trees were hung with white and black gauze ghosts and ghouls. He couldn’t walk a block without passing yards crowded with plastic skeletons, fake cobwebs, and styrofoam gravestones. When he reached the cafe, he found it decked out in orange and black bunting.

Pepper Potts-Hogan turned out to be a slender woman with carrot-orange hair, dressed in form-fitting business-wear. She was sitting outside when he arrived, drinking something out of a wide mug that was topped with whipped cream and gleaming, sticky-sweet syrup. After greeting each other briefly, Steve went inside to get his own order—and to see the St.-Bernard-sized fake spider hanging from the ceiling—then rejoined her at the little metal table on the sidewalk.

“Thanks for meeting with me, Steve,” Pepper said. “I do have the agreements, if you want to look at them.”

Steve took the papers and the pen she offered and started signing at the points marked by yellow arrow stickers. “It’s fine, I read the copies you sent me over email.”

“Off the record, I’m not really worried you’re going to sell or steal SE secrets,” she confided with a dimpled smile.

“I kinda got that idea,” Steve admitted with a smile of his own.

“Legal does want you to sign these, but I was hoping to talk to you, as one friend of Tony’s to another,” Pepper said slowly, as if testing the waters.

Steve nodded, unsure how to reply.

“Tony has wonderful things to say about you,” she went on. “Once I got him talking, that is.”

“Oh?”

“I had to find out about you from Detective Prifti of the Cuarzo County Sheriff’s Department, you see. He gave Tony the names of you and your friends, and asked if you were connected in any way.” She shook her head and took a sip of her drink. “Imagine my surprise when Tony told the detective that you and he had been close friends for months.”

“He never mentioned me,” Steve said dumbly.

“That’s Tony,” Pepper sighed. “I take it he never mentioned me, either? Or someone called Rhodey?”

“Not by name.” Steve hoped he sounded apologetic, but was feeling more confused and frustrated than anything else.

“Yes, well.” She pursed her lips. “Tony and Rhodey and I have been close since we were undergrads. Tony was in my wedding to Happy and Rhodey’s to Carol. But since he left New York—well.”

“Since he left New York?” Steve prompted.

“It’s not that I don’t understand why he’d want to get out of the spotlight,” Pepper said. “We have plenty of other people to handle PR, and the products speak for themselves. SE can get by without him having to play Steve Jobs for the rest of his life. And a break from the partying and the suck-ups and the assholes can only do him good. But he’s been so….” She exhaled deeply, staring for a moment at the shops across the street. “Withdrawn.”

“The assholes?”

Pepper’s eye snapped back to his. “What did Tony tell you about Ty?”

“Not much,” he said, not liking at all where this was going.

“Tony blames himself for Ty’s death,” Pepper said. Steve watched her long, fire-engine red fingernails tap against her cup. “I say the fucker had it coming.”

“That bad?”

“Tony said that Ty never hit him,” she began, and Steve felt the wind knocked out of him like someone had just hit _him_. “But if you end up in a place where that’s a conversation that you need to have with your friends? Repeatedly?” She shook her head. “He was violent in other ways. The man was a snake. No, that’s unfair to snakes. I once dated a guy with a lovely pet python.”

“Why was Tony with him?” Steve asked.

“Only Tony really knows for sure.” She chewed on her bottom lip, making Steve wonder how she didn’t end up with lipstick on her teeth. “But Ty can be—could be—very charming. Their good times were, to hear it, very good.”

“That’s not worth feeling unsafe.”

“It was to Tony. Ty was very attentive. I imagine even when he was in one of his moods, as Tony called them, he still made it all about Tony, even if it was to blame him. And Tony loves attention.”

Steve felt his spine tense and straighten. “That’s not fair.”

Pepper seemed to deflate a little. “No,” she said after a moment. “It’s not. I just—he told Tony that I was only spending time with him because of work. That Happy was jealous of him and didn’t like us hanging out together. Jealous. Of one of my oldest friends. Of an out, gay man! He was Happy’s friend, too. He threw Happy’s bachelor party. I know it’s Ty’s fault, but it was Tony who told me we were never really friends, you see?”

“I think so,” Steve said, though he still felt defensive.

“Rhodey got him to listen to reason a couple of times, but he just wasn’t around enough. He’s in the military, you know? Him and his wife, both.” The wind picked up, blowing some of her styled hair across her freckled face. “So when they’re both stateside, the first thing they do is go home and spend time together. And it’s not the same, he wasn’t there week after week, seeing it, seeing what it did to him.”

“What did it do to him?”

Pepper swallowed and picked at her mug with one long, red nail. “A couple of weeks before Ty died, I asked Tony why he always ended up with these assholes. Do you know what he said to me?” Her voice shook. “He was drunk, I don’t even know if he knew what he was saying. But, he told me. That when he was dating a guy like that, he knew where he stood. He knew they could never really fall in love with him. Because they could both agree he didn’t deserve it.”

“Jesus,” Steve whispered.

“But he did,” she went on. “In his own twisted way, Ty loved him, or he thought he did. He was always saying it, and you could tell he believed it. Not that it helped. I was the one who called in the discreet repair crews when Ty punched a wall or smashed a set of plates or whatever it was that week.”

“That doesn’t sound like a CEO’s job.”

Pepper smiled wryly. “Yes, well, I used to be his assistant, and some habits are hard to break. He didn’t want anyone else to know what was going on, anyway.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “God, and I was helping him keep it secret. He could’ve gotten help.” After blinking rapidly, she seemed to recover herself a bit. “What I’m saying is, or what I was trying to say is, Ty wasn’t the only asshole he dated, just the one that blew up in everyone’s faces by dying. And he wasn’t the only asshole Tony hung around with in New York. I’m glad he got out of that scene.”

“But you’re worried about him.”

“But I’m worried about him,” she agreed, smiling faintly. “Ty’s death rattled him. It would rattle anyone, of course, seeing someone die like that. But I think it was more than that. And now this detective calls up the office and says you’ve found Tiberius Stone’s teeth!”

“How did—how did Tony take that?”

“You know how he is. For a second, he was upset—he looked terrified. And then he laughed and said it was just some dumb prank.” She scoffed. “What would the point of a prank like that even be?”

“It certainly doesn’t sound very funny to me,” Steve agreed.

“Nor to the Sheriff’s Department,” she said. “Look, I know you haven’t heard from him in a while, but if you do. Or. If you find anything out, on your own. Let me know? Please.”

“Of course.”

“And I’ll do the same. If he tells me something, or I learn something, I promise I’ll let you know.”

They parted soon after that, leaving Steve to walk home with thoughts of Tiberius Stone filling his head. Plastic ghosts and skeletons waved from trees and porches.

If he felt like he was being followed, well. At least he didn’t see anyone behind him.

 

_________

 

That weekend Clint was heading out of town with his brother, Barney, and some of their friends from their days working at the carnival. Steve had agreed to stay at Clint’s house out on the edge of town to take care of Lucky. His own apartment didn’t technically allow pets, and while he had never gotten in trouble for having Lucky over during the day, he felt like having him spend the night for a week was crossing a line, or at least begging to be found out.

Plus, he was kind of looking forward to spending some time away from his own apartment.

Clint’s house was out in the woods, down a wood path that turned out of a gravel road. It had decent internet, terrible cell phone reception, and an old-fashioned landline telephone to make up for it. Steve wouldn’t have a car, since Clint was taking his, and would be depending on his stock of groceries, what he could get from the small grocery store a 2-mile walk away, and what he could forage from the sprawling wild around the house. He’d been thinking of it as a vacation, of a sorts.

Until Friday night, that is. Clint, Natasha, and Barney had spent the evening at the Twa Corbies, drinking to Barney’s arrival and his and Clint’s approaching departure. Steve accepted a ride home and stopped at the front of his building to check his mail.

There was no mail in the mailbox. There wasn’t a bird skull, either.

There were feathers.

Long, black, glossy feathers. Feathers that reflected hints of flint and indigo. Ink black feathers with pointed white shafts. Short ones, downy ones, crushed ones. But mostly, they were long and dark and so many of them that they completely filled his mailbox.

Steve decided he’d file a police report from Clint’s house the next day.

 

_________

 

The first day at Clint’s house began well enough. Steve unpacked his groceries in Clint’s narrow kitchen, got his laptop set up with his drawing tablet and the finicky internet, and then settled in to read on the front porch, Lucky curled at his feet.

Late in the afternoon, he checked the time on his phone and saw that he had an email from Natasha.

_Hey,_

_Hope you’re settled in at Clint’s._

_I was looking into Stark’s family and found something weird. A bunch of the men in his family died from downing. His dad drowned in his own bathtub. It was harder to find out about his mom’s first two husbands because there were so many rumors and some of the files from the murder investigations are still closed to the public, but one of them was a noted fisherman. His grandfather, Bernardo Carbonell, died in some kind of boating accident. His great-grandfather was on location for a film that was being shot with some of his equipment and fell into a fucking lake. It gets harder to track prior to that, because before that the family was in Italy and I don’t speak Italian._

_Super weird, right? None of them were that old, either. And then Stark nearly drowned the night you met him._

_Anyway, I’m actually looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this, even if it means more of you talking about Tony. I’ll see you Tuesday for dinner. Say hi to Lucky for me._

_Love,_

_Nat_

Steve was looking forward to his thoughts on the subject, too, in that he didn’t yet know quite what they were. What Natasha had found would be plenty of fodder for a superstitious mind, that was for sure.

He wondered how Tiberius Stone had died.

When dusk started to fall and gauzy clouds made a smear over the moon, he put his book aside with a stretch and headed into the trees. A ways through the woods that surrounded the house were various fruit and nut trees, mixed in with the sycamores, oaks, and alders. There were a couple walnut trees, a pear tree, and several citrus trees, but right now Steve was headed for a small apple grove. The gravensteins should still be ripe, and he was thinking of making an apple crisp with a crumbled oat topping.

He hadn’t made it far when Lucky stopped in his tracks and began to whine. Steve followed his gaze, expecting to see a tree full of crows, or maybe the more ordinary sight of a squirrel chittering and teasing him.

With mounting dread, that Steve realized he hadn’t seen any crows since he’d arrived at Clint’s house. And that the tree Lucky was looking at had an eye painted on it in bright white.

It wasn’t usual to have been seeing as many crows as he had been, he reminded himself, his heart pounding in his chest. Things were just going back to normal, and that’s why he hadn’t noticed their absence.

Still, looking at the curved shape painted on the bark, Steve found he desperately missed the birds.

They were supposed to be bad omens, harbingers. He should feel relieved they were gone. And, he realized with a shiver, they’d appeared around the same time he’d started to think he was being followed.

That wasn’t quite right though. _He_ wasn’t the superstitious one, he reminded himself. They were just birds, intelligent, common birds. If anything, their cawing had sometimes been what made him notice he was being followed and given him time to take precautions. And, how did it go? _One for sorrow, Two for mirth, Three for a funeral, Four for birth, Five for heaven, Six for hell, Seven for the devil, his own self._ It was the number of crows that made the omen.

What did none mean?

The gravensteins were just a little further, and Steve wasn’t about to back down from his dessert because of a few marks on a tree. After bending to give Lucky a reassuring scratch behind the ears, he kept walking. Lucky followed at his heels.

He passed another tree with the eye markings on it, these in yellow, and so large that each one curved around the trunk. Then another, a dogwood tree with red leaves in the same lenticular shape as the markings, the designs on this one filled in with white and outlined in black. A bare, gnarled oak was covered all in white lines again, the circles and curved lines covering the trunk and lower branches.

Soon he reached the apple trees, and quickly filled his bag with fresh fruit. Lucky started nudging his leg before long, and Steve tried to pick them faster still.

Finally he had enough apples for a crisp and to snack on over the next few days, and he set off back toward the house at a brisk pace. The sun seemed to be setting more rapidly than usual, and was already casting long, low shadows through the trees.

Painted across the trunks of five white alders was a single, huge, red eye. The pigment looked fresh, wetly catching the dim rays of sun. Even in the dimming light, the crimson lines were all the more prominent for being painted over the pale white bark of the alders.

Looking at it sent a shiver down his spine like someone had just stepped on his grave.

Steve didn’t think. He just ran all the way back to the house.

Once he was inside, the yellow lamplight filling the brick-walled kitchen made it feel distant from the shadowy forest and the shapes painted in it. He set some music to play on Clint’s old record player, gave Lucky his evening meal, and began slicing a butternut squash for his dinner. A light, soothing rain began to fall, and by the time he’d finished sautéing mushrooms and had the apple crisp in the oven, he felt at almost entirely at ease once more.

Still, when it came time to turn in, he left more lights on throughout the house than he would have usually, and went through every room to check that all the windows were closed. There might might have been some lingering disquiet, he admitted to himself as he made his way to the bedroom.

As always, Lucky trailed after him, his tail wagging lowly, his head tilted as if in question.

As much as Steve enjoyed Lucky’s company, their friendship was born mostly from common interests. The both liked going on jogs in the morning, walking around town and checking out interesting plants, and strolling up and down the beach. Steve figured that when he worked on illustrations and Lucky napped at his feet, that counted as them both enjoying hanging around his apartment all day, too.

But he hadn’t grown up with dogs, and while he thought that if he got his own someday he might let them sleep on his bed, he never allowed Lucky to do so when he stayed at Clint’s. Lucky had the run of Clint’s whole house, which included his own bed, the twin in the guest room, and several couches and armchairs to curl up on. Steve didn’t think it was much of a hardship for Lucky to miss out sleeping on a human bed, whatever Lucky’s pleading eyes tried to tell him each time he gave the dog a firm _No_ as he climbed under the covers.

That night, though, as he arranged the pillows behind his head and adjusted the blankets, he patted the mattress in invitation. Lucky wagged his tail once and leapt up to join him.

He just felt like some company while he slept that night, Steve thought. That was all.

 

_________

 

Steve woke up to a single, sharp bark and hot breath in his ear. Lucky crouched at the head of the bed, his nose in Steve’s face.

“You okay, boy?” Steve asked groggily, pushing himself upright. He’d been dreaming, he recalled. There had been hands, bloody hands, reaching around the trunks of trees. Pale skin, like a drowning victim, with viscous red blood dripping from them.

Lucky pawed at his shoulder, shaking him from his thoughts. A sharp tapping sound made Steve turn toward the window.

A large crow stood on the windowsill, balancing on one leg. Its other limb had something sticking out from it.

For a moment Steve just stared. The crow tilted its head, aiming one beady eye at Steve. It cawed once, then resumed tapping at the glass with its beak.

Steve got to his feet, brushing a hand through his hair. The light in the room was the dim and dull haze of just before sunrise. He expected the crow to fly off as he approached, but it remained. It blinked at him and cawed once more.

As he drew near, Steve saw that the object protruding from the crow’s injured leg was a USB drive, the same shiny black as its feathers. It was attached with a scraggly bit of wire, twisted tight around the gray scales of its leg.

Still the bird didn’t take flight. In fact, it seemed to settle the closer Steve approached. Even when he came right up to the window and began to open it, the crow remained.

As soon as the window was open wide enough, the crow fluttered in, lighting on a bedside lamp. It held out its injured leg and squawked loudly.

Steve turned to Lucky, not sure whether he was expecting the dog to bark, or attack the crow, or maybe to give Steve some clue what to do. Lucky just opened his mouth a little, his pink tongue slipping between his canines, and panted.

Steve walked up to the bird. Again, it didn’t bolt. Instead, it let Steve bring his hands right up to its proffered leg and carefully unwind the wire, freeing the USB drive.

He put the drive in the pocket of his sweatpants and regarded the bird. There was still its injury to deal with.

Steve decided to call Sam.

His cell phone didn’t work anywhere in or near Clint’s house, and never had. Although StarkPhones boasted better reception than others, Steve was still stuck on the same network as before, and he didn’t think there were any that got good service in this neighborhood. As such, Clint had a couple landlines, the closest in his living room. It was there that Steve headed now. Lucky hopped from the bed after him, followed by the crow.

He had to check his phone contacts to get Sam’s number. It had been years since he’d actually dialed a number to call it, instead of using a saved contact. He probably still had the number for Peggy’s childhood home memorized, he thought, from all the nights he’d called her from the landline of his mother’s apartment.

He took the cordless phone from its cradle and carried it over to Clint’s big, jam-colored couch. Lucky walked in three circles and then lay down near his feet with a small huff. Steve settled against the cushions with the phone beside him and pressed the thick rubbery buttons for Sam’s number. After he’d finished his undergrad work at Cuarzo State, Sam had gone to veterinary school and now worked at a rescue for wild birds outside of Santa Cruz.

He picked up after just a couple rings. “Hey Clint.”

“It’s Steve, actually. I’m petsitting at Clint’s this week,” Steve said.

“Oh, what’s up Steve? Nice to hear from you when you’re not walking home.”

“You busy?”

“Not for another hour. What’s up?”

“Can you walk me through bird first aid for a broken leg?”

There was silence from the other line. Then, Sam said, “Did Clint get a bird? It’s not a parrot, is it, those things live forever.”

“No, this crow showed up at the window, it had something tied to its leg. It must have been too tight or something, because it won’t put any weight on that side when it’s standing,” Steve said.

“Yeah, birds have fragile legs. Okay, so, first thing’s first, you have to catch the thing.”

Steve watched the crow hop across the couch cushions toward him. “I… don’t think that’s going to be problem.”

“Made a friend, huh?”

“You could say that.”

“Well, crows are really smart. Did you see that the article about the girl who fed the crows in her neighborhood, and they started bringing her gifts?”

Steve had, but. “Didn’t that take a long time though? Like, months?”

“It was over a few years, actually, yeah. So how’d you bribe your new crow buddy?” Sam asked.

“I’m not sure. It just showed up at the window and then flew in. I got the thing off its leg and now it’s sort of… following me.”

“That is some Disney princess shit right there, Steve,” Sam laughed. “Wish I could say I was surprised.”

“I am not a Disney princess,” Steve grumbled.

“Dude, you go out into the forest to collect berries and nuts and shit, and then you cook delicious feasts for your friends. You rescue drowning people like the Little Mermaid. You’re kinda a Disney Princess.”

“I’ll try not to make any deals with sea witches.”

“You do that. Okay, so, your injured friend. What’s his leg look like?”

Under Sam’s instruction, Steve swaddled the crow in a towel, then carefully plucked the feathers around the break in its leg. It waited patiently while he searched the house for first aid supplies, then stood stock-still while he dabbed its leg with disinfectant and wrapped medical tape around the break.

It seemed to know when he was finished, too. It flew off, heading straight for the kitchen. Steve followed. It was then that Lucky finally stirred, but only to walk alongside Steve as he stood in the doorway and watched the crow drink from Lucky’s water bowl.

“If you can get the crow into a cage or something, though, it should really see a vet,” Sam said. “And when—”

“Sam?”

The other line was silent. Steve sighed and looked at the phone, expecting to see the battery had run out. Instead, the screen was bright as ever. The blocky text over it, though, read _SIGNAL LOST._

He hit redial, but the phone just beeped at him. The words _NO SIGNAL_ flashed at him.

There was another landline with a cord mounted to the kitchen wall. Steve strode over to it and held it to his ear. There was no dial tone. He clicked the hook a few times, but there was still nothing.

At least he’d been able to take care of the crow before the line went dead. As if responding to his thoughts, the crow cawed several times and flapped up to him.

“You want to go back outside?” Steve asked. “I need to figure out a way to get you a vet first.” The crow just cawed more and flitted around Steve’s waist.

He remembered the flash drive, drawing it from his pocket. A person had to have tied it to the crow intentionally. He knew you could train pigeons and some other birds to carry mail and messages: owls in _Harry Potter_ , and ravens in other fantasy books. Crows were very intelligent, maybe they could be trained for it, too. That might explain why it was so fearless around Steve and Lucky. Had Steve been the intended recipient, though?

Well, he figured, looking at the flash drive was one way to find out who the message was really for, or maybe who had sent it. He walked back to the living room and sat in front of his laptop.

When he uncapped the flash drive, he saw that it was a Stark drive. In fact, it looked like one of the new prototypes that Tony had showed him, the kind that could hold several terabytes in a slimmer, smaller space than the competitors’ held 128GB. Sure enough, he turned it over to see _8TB_ in raised gold lettering along with the Stark Enterprises logo.

Unsettled, he inserted it into his computer. A folder popped up, containing hundreds of high-resolution photo files. The titles were only dates, the most recent of which was the previous evening. They went all the way back to the previous November, though.

Steve opened them, arranged so that the oldest ones appeared first.

They were photos of him. Every single one.

Steve parking Clint’s car in front of the Carbonell mansion. Steve leaving the mansion in the wee hours of the morning, lit only by the porch light. Steve in Tony’s car leaving town, speeding down the 101, at a rest stop, at a gas station, parking near UC Berkeley, walking through campus, sitting with Tony in front of Goliath’s Head. Steve walking through Nublado, picking berries, walking Lucky, going on his morning jog. Steve walking into High Tides, chatting with someone outside the Twa Corbies, getting out of Clint’s car in front of is apartment building. Steve outside the grocery store, Steve tying his jogging shoes, Steve sitting at a restaurant patio with Natasha.

There were photos of him meeting with Pepper, too. Of him going into the bar on Friday, of him leaving in the backseat of Clint’s car, of him opening his mailbox Friday night and finding the feathers.

There were photos of him picking apples last night.

He was definitely being followed.

The phone cutting out probably hadn’t been a fluke or a short in a wire somewhere, then. He checked the wifi signal on his laptop, already knowing he’d find it nonexistent. He wasn’t pleased when he was proved correct.

He found Clint’s router. A light blinked red, letting him know there was no connection.

Steve dressed quickly, not quite sure what he was going to do. He was glad he’d filed the police report the day before, so he had at least some paper trail that he’d noticed something earlier. Once he had his clothes on, he ejected the flash drive and put it in his pocket. His landlord probably had records of the vandalism to the building, too—though that was already clearly visible in some of the pictures of Steve walking up the stairs to his apartment, he reminded himself.

He could walk to the nearby grocery store, ask to use their phone. There was probably a neighbor’s house closer, but he didn’t know where, exactly, and didn’t feel comfortable heading out without a specific destination in mind.

He’d have to take Lucky with him. Whoever he was dealing with, they had injured the crow, and would surely hurt Lucky too. They wouldn’t be happy about it at the grocery store, but he’d figure something out. Maybe he’d have cell reception over there, or they’d have a cordless phone, or he’d find someone to keep an eye on Lucky while he went inside.

That just left the question of the crow. He didn’t exactly have a birdcage. Clint didn’t even have something like a cat carrier. After a quick hunt of the house, Steve found a cardboard box that didn’t seem like it would be too cramped for the crow. He lined it with the towel he’d wrapped around the crow before, then set it by the door as he sat to lace his shoes. The crow cocked its head, peered at him, then flapped over and landed inside the open box.

Well, that was easier than he’d thought it would be. Though with how docile and obedient the crow had been so far, maybe he should have expected it. He just hoped the police wouldn’t mind the presence of Steve’s bird and dog and accompaniment. He could call Natasha, he figured, and she could take the bird to the vet and get Lucky somewhere safe. Maybe he should call Pepper, too.

Steve scooped the box into his arms and folded the top flaps loosely shut. The crow cawed loudly in protest for a moment, then seemed to settle. Steve took Lucky’s leash in hand and headed out the door.

He wasn’t pleased to have to walk through the woods again. He was careful to pick a different route than the one that he’d taken to the apple trees the night before.

Still. He wished he could say he was surprised to find more trees painted with the shapes of eyes.

He was maybe five minutes into his walk, having passed dozens of trees emblazoned with the glaring, white, eyes, when he heard the distinct sound of someone else walking through the woods.

Steve checked his phone. Still no reception.

Leaves crunched and twigs snapped. Steve sped up, and the footsteps behind him kept pace. The crow began to caw almost frantically in its box.

It could just be someone else who lived out here, Steve told himself. Just because he was definitely being stalked didn’t mean that’s who was following him right now.

Yeah, that lie didn’t really offer much comfort, Steve thought grimly.

Then the laughter started. It was the same sound he’d heard in the house of mirrors, the piercing, crazed laugh that had filled the halls of the maze.

Steve broke into a run. The laughter grew louder, and the footsteps picked up speed behind him. Whoever was behind him, they were running after him.

He had pretty good chances of outrunning whoever it was, he figured. He went jogging nearly every day—though, ironically, he’d been keeping up with it less diligently since he’d started thinking he was being followed. He was still in good shape, though. And he was ahead of them for now. If he could just keep pace and make it to the store, there would be other people. Other people, and no more trees covered in eerie paintings.

So Steve ran. Lucky jogged alongside, his tail tight against his rear, his hackles bristling. The crow continued squawking, its calls muffled by the towel and the cardboard but still going strong. At times its volume overpowered the laughter. Steve couldn’t help but think of the two sounds as being in competition with each other. He certainly preferred the shrill caws of the crow. The laughter went on and on, intercut by gulps of air to catch breath before starting again in full force. Steve glanced behind him, but couldn’t catch sight of whoever was after him.

All at once, the direction the laughter came from changed. One second it was behind him, then it was ahead of him. He ran on, unsure what else to do.

A man appeared in front of him. Manifested, materialized, just _appeared_ between two trees where previously there had only been leaves.

Steve skidded to a halt. The man was laughing, loud and arhythmic and harsh. It was the same man he’d seen in the house of mirrors, broad-shouldered and blond, uncannily familiar.

The man took a step toward him, and Steve knew where he’d seen his face before.

It was Tiberius Stone.

Tiberius Stone was _dead_. He was buried in New York and the Cuarzo Sheriff’s Department had his teeth in a box somewhere in their evidence locker. This man was laughing and breathing and baring his face in a wide, toothy grin that rent his face like a wound.

_There’s something out there, and it’s after you._

That’s what Wanda had told him. He hadn’t known what to make of it at the time, whether it was something that Tony feared, something incorporeal, fueled by superstition, or something real.

Apparently it was both.

Tiberius Stone took another step toward him, his laughter never ceasing, his skin pale and sallow in the sun through the trees, and Steve realized that he was still standing, rooted to the spot where he’d stopped. Lucky tugged at his leash, pulling toward the approaching man. Inside the box, the crow flapped and dove and cawed and cawed and cawed.

_There is help for you if you look for it. And Tony has already done what he can to protect you._

_The pendant you’re wearing._

Well, Steve thought, if he was going to be chased by a dead man, he may as well try to fight back with magic.

He had the leash looped over one wrist and the box with the crow in his other arm, so he fumbled to pull the pendant out from his shirt.

Several things happened at once.

The crow shot out of the box, breaking through the folded cardboard flaps. Lucky used the opportunity of Steve’s movement to make a final, sharp tug forward, pulling the leash off of Steve’s hand. Lucky and the bird both barreled toward Stone, the crow crying out and diving while Lucky growled and jumped.

The laughter turned to a scream, echoing and furious. Then it was cut short as the form of Tiberius Stone dissolved into nothing.

Lucky landed on the fallen leaves there Stone had been standing. The crow darted back straight up at the last moment.

Steve took a step forward, reaching for Lucky’s leash. But as he approached, the dog bolted. The crow flew after him.

At least, Steve thought as he took off after them, they were headed in the direction of the grocery store.

“Lucky!” he called. “Come here!”

Lucky continued to race through the trees. Close to the ground as he was, he was able to make much better time than Steve, who had to skirt low branches.

“Lucky!” he yelled again. He was losing sight of both dog and bird through the trees. If Tiberius Stone, or whoever or whatever it was, would hurt the crow just to deliver the USB drive—and, Steve thought with a shiver, to collect enough feathers to fill his mailbox—he was capable of hurting a dog, too.

Seemingly summoned by the thought, Stone reappeared, materializing as if being put together piece by piece out of grains of sand. He stood between the dark trunks of two withered trees, his hands clenched into fists. His laughter erupted once more, bouncing off the trees. His clothes, which Steve had thought before were simply dark, he saw now were wet, soaked through and dripping water.

Fuck this, Steve thought. Fuck ghosts and hauntings and superstition and magic.

He gripped the _lunula_ in one hand and ran straight for Stone. Stone’s laughter descended into hysterical giggles, making Steve’s hair stand on end.

The ground shifted under his feet, and for one terrible moment, Steve was sure that it was an earthquake. Another earthquake, another tsunami, another flood, he couldn’t, he couldn’t, not again, he couldn’t—

And then he fell back as if pushed, only barely keeping his feet. The earth was no longer moving under him. It wasn’t earth at all, in fact, but a hardwood floor, with chalky white markings.

Steve looked up. He was inside, in a room, and Tony Stark was sitting just feet away from him, holding Lucky in his lap. A crow with white medical tape on one leg was perched on one of his shoulders.

“Tony,” Steve said, stumbling forward. “What. Did you do that? Did you bring me here?”

Lucky jumped off of Tony and ran toward Steve, his tail wagging wildly. The crow took wing with a caw and fluttered toward him as well.

Tony’s mouth twisted into a strange smile. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m a witch.”

Then he swayed and fell to one side, unconscious.

 

_________

 

Steve darted to where Tony lay crumpled on the floor. “Tony!”

He didn’t stir. Cursing, Steve scooped him up into his arms. He was, he quickly realized, in Tony’s bedroom. The enormous bed was pushed against one wall, and the dark wood floors were covered in elaborate markings, concentric circles and squares overlaid with tiled triangles and arcs that all joined to form a complex mandala. The chalk lines smeared under his feet as he carried Tony to the bed.

Steve lifted a wrist to check Tony’s pulse. He had to take deep breaths and still his own breathing before he could be sure he heard it. Whatever had made him pass out, Tony was just unconscious for now.

Steve checked his phone. Somehow, he wasn’t surprised when it didn’t turn on.

He walked to the door. He had some surprise left, it seemed; the door wouldn’t open the way he expected it to. It didn’t open at all.

He raked a hand through his hair as he turned back to the room. Tony, looking peaceful, as if asleep, on his huge gold bed. Lucky, staring at Steve with his head cocked to one side, as if expecting something. The two crows—

The two crows. Perched beside the one with the injured leg on Tony’s headboard was a second crow. Seeing Steve’s attention, it cawed and fluttered its wings.

 _One for sorrow, two for mirth_. That had to be a good sign, right?

Steve returned to the bed. He sat on the edge. After a second’s hesitation, he took Tony’s hand.

“Tony,” he said. “Wake up.”

Still Tony didn’t move.

The crows squawked and cawed and cried, bouncing from side to side along their roost.

“You got something to say?” Steve asked them. They quieted.

Lucky huffed out a loud breath. Steve turned at the sound. Hopping along the floor, its talons scratching the chalk, was a third crow.

When he turned back to look at Tony, a fourth and fifth crow were perched beside the original pair on the headboard. _Three for a funeral, Four for birth, Five for heaven…_

Steve glanced back to look at the mandala on the floor. Where one crow had been standing were now three. Seven crows.

“What are you doing here,” Steve grumbled.

There were other versions of the rhyme. Steve had looked them up after the day at the circus. _One for sorrow, Two for joy, Three for a girl, Four for a boy, Five for silver, Six for gold, Seven for a secret, Never to be told._

The crow with the bandaged leg cawed loudly.

Tony sat up with a sudden, sharp intake of breath. “Fuck,” he said.

“Are you okay?” Steve asked.

Tony’s eyes widened. “Am I okay, Steve, you’re the one who just got ambushed by a revenant.”

“You passed out.”

Tony leaned away. “I’m fine. Did he hurt you?”

“No. What the hell is going on?”

“Right.” Tony swallowed. “I’m a witch, and I cast a spell to teleport you here. It took a lot of power, that’s all.”

“So everything that’s been going on, with Stone and the crows and everything else, is magic,” Steve said.

Tony gnawed on his lip. “Yes and no. The curse is magic, yes. But what I do is thaumaturgy.”

“The curse?” Steve repeated sharply.

“Right. Right. The beginning. It—” Tony was interrupted by a crow landing on his shoulder and cawing. “Oh, sorry,” he said, turning to look at it. “I forgot.”

“Are you—talking to the crow?”

Tony nodded and dug a hand into his pocket. He pulled it back out holding a neat bundle of pale, shiny wires and offered them to the crow. It made a sound almost like a dove cooing, took the wires in its beak, and then vanished.

Steve looked around the room. The other crows were gone too. “What was that?”

“They’re, well. They’re practitioners too,” Tony said.

“Of magic,” Steve said, frowning. Lucky took the absence of the crows as a sign to leap onto the bed. He walked in several circles, then plopped down onto his back, his legs in the air.

“Of thaumaturgy,” Tony corrected. “Big difference.” He glanced away. “I, um. I asked them to keep an eye on you. Let me know if you got into any trouble.”

“That’s how you knew to bring me here,” Steve said. “And that’s why he was hurting them.”

Tony nodded. “Yeah. Are they—he didn’t kill any of them? They would have told me—”

“No, I don’t think so,” Steve said quickly. “One of them had a broken leg. And he filled my mailbox with their feathers, god knows where he got those.”

“Good,” Tony said. “Good.”

“What did you give them?”

“Just some silver. It repels evil intent.” He looked thoughtful. “Nice and shiny, too. They like to line their nests with it.”

“Like the _lunula_ ,” Steve said, mostly to himself. Beside him, Lucky had fallen asleep, one of his feet twitching in time to his dream. “But not this curse?”

Tony scrubbed a hand over his face. “My great-great—or maybe great-great-great, I can never remember—grandmother was a witch too. All the women on my mom’s side of the family were. And she crossed the wrong person, and someone put a curse on her. On her whole family.”

“All the men who drowned,” Steve said, realization dawning.

Tony stared. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “So that original witch. Any man who falls in love with someone from her line is fated to die.”

“And that’s—magic.”

“Yes.”

“As opposed to—thaumaturgy?”

“Yes. Thaumaturgy is much more precise,” Tony said, sounding defensive.

“But what is it, if it’s not magic?”

“They harness the same forces, but it’s like…” Tony trailed off, tilting his head. “Okay, here’s an imperfect metaphor: it’s like the difference between technical drawing and fine art. In some cases, one might be mistaken for the other, and they might use the same materials, but the intentions and execution and result are all different.”

Steve tried to take that in—to take all of it in. “So what does that look like, then, in real life?”

“Magic runs on” —Tony gestured vaguely, Steve watching the movements of his hands and wondering how he hadn’t realized immediately that Tony’s hands could control the forces of nature— “feelings and associations. It only needs to make sense to the person casting it. Magic spells look like poems or fairy tales. Thaumaturgical spells look like chemical equations, scientific formulas, or computer code.” He said this last proudly, as if there could be any doubt which method he thought superior.

“And thaumaturgy can’t be used to break the curse?”

“Not that we’ve found, no.”

“And how does Tiberius Stone factor in? Why is he—still around?”

“Sheer force of will, as far as I can tell,” Tony said. “He didn’t finish being an awful person when he was alive, so he carried on after he died.”

“This is—this is a lot, Tony,” Steve said.

“I know,” Tony whispered. “I’m sorry. Fuck Steve, I didn’t mean to bring you into this. I know that doesn’t matter, I did anyway. I just. I’m selfish, and I was so lonely, and you’re the first person I ever had fun with sober. Spending time with you was the first time I think I ever _liked_ myself. Sober or otherwise.”

Steve’s stomach swooped like he was riding shotgun in Tony’s fast little car and Tony had just turned a sharp curve at breakneck speed. “That’s why you left,” he said. “You thought that I was—and so—that I was going to die.”

Tony shut his eyes. “It’s worse than that.”

Steve tightened his grip on Tony’s hand. “Tony please,” he said. “Tell me. Let me help.”

“Fuck.” Tony shot to his feet, dislodging himself from Steve. “You’re so—god, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“What is it. Please.”

Tony looked to the ceiling. “The summer I turned fifteen, I. I was back from boarding school, and I’d had my first fling with another boy in my dorms. I spent weeks in the library reading about Stonewall and gay rights and gay sex. And then I came out to my mom.” He turned his face back to Steve’s, his eyes blazing. “She—I’d never seen her like that. She cried, god, she cried so much.”

Steve knew how important Tony’s mother was to him, what her approval would mean to him. “Why?”

Tony laughed, a croaky, bitter, hollow sound that cut off before it really began. “I thought the same thing as you. I was terrified, I thought she was going to throw me out—or tell Howard, which would’ve been the same thing. But then she hugged me and said she was just worried about me.”

“Because—oh.”

“Yeah. She’d thought—she’d thought that by having a boy she was keeping her child safe.” He choked out another empty laugh.

“Had she used—magic, or thaumaturgy, whatever, to have a boy?” Steve asked.

“I think so. She never said, but she must have. I was the first boy since the curse was cast, I think.”

“But she hadn’t told you about the curse before.”

Tony shook his head. “No. So I told her I’d be safe and use protection, that they taught us all about HIV and condoms and everything in my sex ed classes, that I wasn’t dumb enough to tell my dad. But then she told me about the curse.”

“Did you believe her?”

“Yes. Do you?”

It was hard not to, with Tony’s eyes fixed on him like that, holding him in place like a wave pushing him underwater. “Yes.”

Tony inhaled a shaky breath, his eyes darting away from Steve’s once more. Steve felt hyper-aware of the scant feet of floor separating them. If he stood up, he could be right beside Tony in a moment, could press their bodies together once more. But Tony didn’t want that, he’d left, he’d only brought Steve here now to save his life. And, god, he’d known all of this, kept it from Steve.

“The first night you came over here, I told you there was a tradition of the women in my family committing to men we don’t love. The curse is why.”

“You’re trying to break it.”

“Evade it, more,” Tony hedged. “We were just trying to find a loophole. A way to have it all, the family life, a husband, keep up appearances. Find a man you could never love, and figure it works the other way. That if you don’t love him, he won’t love you, and if he doesn’t love you, he won’t die.”

“But they did,” Steve said. “They all died. They all drowned.”

“Yes. They did. But my father hadn’t yet. It was already—it was bad, then, but if he’d found out about me, it would have been worse. So my mom said, screw appearances, and left him, and took me out here.”

“Okay,” Steve said. “But that’s not the whole story.”

“It’s not.” Tony squeezed his eyes shut. “I was furious at first. That my life was going to be dictated by this—this magic, this thing that had nothing to do with me or my life or my choices. So I decided I was never going to fall in love. And I cast a spell to make sure that happened. Or,” he let out a shaky exhale, “that’s what I thought I was doing.”

“Tony, c’mon. What happened?”

“I’d been learning witchcraft and thaumaturgy my whole life. I wrote my own spell, a spell to make a—an impossible man. Someone so wonderful, so perfect, that he could never exist. If he was the only one I could fall in love with, well, even if someone was dumb enough to fall for me, at least _I’d_ never be heartbroken, because I would never love _them_. I would only love this perfect, impossible man.” He laughed bitterly. “I told you I was selfish.”

“You were fifteen years old,” Steve said. “Everyone’s selfish then.”

“I ruined your life!” Tony snapped.

“How do you figure, exactly?”

“You’re the one in my spell, don’t you see? I wished for someone—someone tall, and handsome, and brave. His favorite shape would be a star, his favorite book would be _The Silmarillion_ , and his favorite place would be the ocean, so he’d want to come and live with me. He’d know how to juggle eggs and to make the perfect soufflé. He’d be a hero who saved people and loved nature and was a friend to animals. With one blue eye and one green. A guy who was beautiful and sensitive and strong enough to bench press me, who would cook for me and care for me and _love me_. Steve I—the spell is why you fell for me. It’s not real. It’s a fantasy.”

“Don’t tell me what I’m feeling isn’t real,” Steve said fiercely. “Don’t you dare.”

“Steve,” Tony pleaded. “I’m sorry.”

“And you think, what, the spell cured my asthma? Made me work out and have a growth spurt?”

“You did say your recovery was miraculous,” Tony said. “And it happened right when I cast the spell.”

“Well, it must not work how you think it did,” Steve insisted. “You wrote your own spell, and you knew a lot, but you were still a kid, and it didn’t do what you thought it did.”

“That’s the spell talking.”

“It’s me!” Steve insisted. “I’m me! I’ve always—I’ve always been me, okay? It didn’t _make_ me, it didn’t change me. I’ve always loved animals and cooking and taking care of people. I’m not just this, this passive vessel who’s made only to love you.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Tony said. “Of course you’re you. The spell, it found the closest person it could. Thaumaturgy is efficient, it doesn’t like to make something out of nothing. It couldn’t just, I don’t know, _bam_ , make an entire man appear out of nowhere. It took what was already there, it took you, a good person, and it made you think you cared about me.”

“I do care about you.”

“You shouldn’t,” Tony said fervently, his hands balling into fists. “I took advantage of you, I—”

“How do you _possibly_ figure that,” Steve growled. “I was the one who wanted to be with you, I was the one who kissed you out in the gardens, I was—”

“You wouldn’t want to,” Tony interrupted, “without the spell.”

“So you’re saying you what, magically— _excuse_ me, thaumaturgically—roofied me?”

Tony threw up his hands. “If you want to put it like that, yes! You can’t give informed consent when you’re being _mind controlled_.”

“I’m not mind controlled!” Steve yelled. “You didn’t choose this curse, well, okay, neither did! I didn’t choose this spell you cast, I didn’t choose for you to sleep with me and then _leave_ without explaining anything, but I chose to love you, I chose to spend time with you. It was me, it was my choice.”

“You don’t. You don’t love me,” Tony said. “But. That’s not the point.”

Steve took a long, slow breath. “What is the point then?”

“The point is.” Tony took a step closer to Steve. “The point is there’s someone who _will_ know how to lift it. The spell I cast, Ty being back, the curse on my entire family, all of it. You’ll be—we’ll both be—free.”

“And after your spell is lifted,” Steve said, getting to his feet, “you’ll believe that I care about you?”

“You won’t.”

“After the spell is lifted,” Steve repeated sharply, “you’ll believe me?”

Tony’s eyes met his. “Yes.”


	13. Chapter 7 - The Moon and the Sea

Tony led him downstairs—the door to the bedroom opened easily for him—and out to the grounds. They left Lucky asleep in Tony’s bedroom.

“So who is this person?” Steve asked as they made their way through the gardens, weaving around prickly pears and rose bushes. “Who knows how to fix everything?”

“He’s sort of an—elemental. A personification, you could say,” Tony said, reaching up to scratch his nose.

“Of what?” Steve asked.

“Ah,” Tony said. “Well. Of mischief.”

Steve stopped in his tracks. “This is the ‘psycho’ Wanda told you not to make a deal with.”

“How—yes. But I’m out of options. There’s nothing else. And he’s not _just_ mischief, he’s also connected to this land. Well, this area, there’s a lot of water, too,” he added thoughtfully. “And my family has lived here for a while. Not for very long, by his standards, but it’s not nothing.”

“Tony, if this gets out of hand, if I ask you not to deal with him. Will you stop?”

Tony pressed his lips together. “Yes.”

“Okay,” Steve said after a moment. “Let’s go.”

They said nothing else until they reached the redwood cathedral. The damp, earthy smell of the redwoods filled the air. Gnats buzzed lazy spirals around the center. It felt a few degrees warmer in the tight circle of the trees. It was easy to believe that it was a special place.

“Right,” Tony said when they were both standing inside. “This is where I cast the spell on—where I cast when I was 15. There are a lot of ley lines meeting here, blah blah blah, basically, it’s a good place for casting certain types of things. Including a summoning.” He took a deep breath. “Here we go.”

He lifted his arms and his hands formed a series of neat, adroit gestures, forming rigid lines in the humid air.

Nothing happened.

“Shit.” Tony raked his fingers through his hair. He took a deep breath and made the hand motions once more. Still nothing happened. “Okay. Do you want to try to help?”

“Me?”

Tony nodded. “You’ve lived here your whole life. You’re part of my spell and the curse. It’s worth a shot.”

Steve squared his shoulders. “What do I do?”

“You remember when I taught you shadow puppets?”

A shiver shot up Steve’s spine. “Yeah,” he croaked. “I remember.”

Tony nodded. “Make a gazelle, and then two camels facing each other, and then draw your hands toward you and make an elephant with your left and an ox with your right.”

Steve gaped. “I thought you said thaumaturgy was precise.”

“Think of it like—like being a backup singer,” Tony said. “Or part of a chorus. I’m playing lead on this, okay? You can’t mess it up.”

“Okay. Say the order again?”

Tony repeated it, then had Steve say it back to him. He practiced the gestures one at a time until he was sure he was doing them right.

At last they stood shoulder to shoulder and cast the summoning together.

A furious wind whipped through the trees, knocking needles and twigs to the ground. For a moment, the sound of the ocean cut off, and there was silence.

The sound of waves returned in a roar. A man dressed all in green, with two long, curved horns sprouting from his head, was standing in front of them, smirking.

“This,” he said. “Will be most amusing. Greetings, practitioner. Are you going to introduce me to your little friend?”

“I’m Steve,” Steve said stiffly. “And you are?”

“Charmed,” said the man, extending a hand in greeting.

Steve glanced at the proffered hand, then back up at the man’s sharp, kelp-green eyes.

The man dropped his hand, threw back his head, and laughed. “Oh, I like this one. Read a few storybooks, have you? Yes, I’m sure your mother left milk out for the pixies, too.” His eyes glittered. “You may call me Loki.”

“Nice to meet you,” Steve gritted out.  

“What can I do for you, mortals?” Loki asked.

“You know what we want,” Tony said, folding his arms.

Loki’s grin widened. “Oh, of course I do. But I so enjoy hearing you say it.”

“Let’s see.” Tony raised a hand and ticked off his fingers. “Curse on my family line lifted, no more of the men who love us drowning or dying. The love spell I cast gone, Steve has free will, feels whatever he would feel if I hadn’t cast it. Tiberius Stone gone, banished, back to wherever he should go, never to bother us again.”

“Lovely,” Loki said. “And in return?”

Tony spread his arms in an expansive shrug. “Want a vineyard?”

“No, thank you. I receive plenty of grapes and wine in tribute. There is no need to tend to such things myself.” Loki’s eyes flicked thoughtfully between them. “I cannot lift these spells, but I can give you the means to do so. And you will perform a task for me first.”

“What task,” Steve said warily.

“You are familiar, I presume, with the Serpent Rock?”

Tony blinked at him. “For real?”

Loki smiled a thin, crooked smile. “For real.”

“Tony,” Steve said. “What is it?”

“I can do it,” Tony said, facing Steve. “It’s complicated thaumaturgy, but I can do it.”

“Splendid,” Loki said.

“We didn’t say we agreed to your terms,” Steve snapped. “He just said he was capable.”

“A stickler for details. I approve,” Loki said.

“Tony,” Steve said. “What is he asking you to do? Is it dangerous?”

Tony shook his head. “No. He can’t do it because he’s a magical being. He’s—it’s like he’s _all_ magic. He can’t channel thaumaturgical forces. It’s just breaking a spell that another thaumaturgist cast.”

“And you’d tell me if it were really dangerous,” Steve said.

“Yes,” Tony said fiercely. His face was framed by the tawny bark of the redwoods.

“If he double-crosses us,” Steve began, “Can you undo your spell? Undo whatever he’s asking you to fix?”

Tony’s face lit into a brilliant smile. “Yes. Yes, I can set it up so it will revert if he betrays us.”

“Why Steve,” Loki said, his voice melodic. “Are you sure you want to align yourself with this mortal thaumaturgist? Have you ever considered being the consort of an elder god?”

“No thank you,” Steve said.

Tony scoffed. “Elder god, my ass,” he muttered. “Alright, Steve?”

“Go for it.”

“Great.” Tony faced Loki. “I’ll break the spell on Serpent Rock. In return you’ll give us the means to lift the spells specified. If you betray us, the spell will revert.”

“Agreed,” Loki said. He offered his hand once more.

Tony took it, warily. They shook.

“Excellent.” Loki straightened his green robes. “You have until the moon sets tomorrow morning.”

With that, he vanished.

“Well,” Tony said, slowly facing Steve. “Good thing tonight is the full moon.”

“What is it we’re doing?”

“A transformation,” Tony said. “And it’s fine, you don’t have to come with me.” He said it casually, like he was letting Steve off the hook for being five minutes late to a meeting, doing him a minor favor. He moved to leave the redwood cathedral.

Steve crossed his arms as he followed. “I’d like to anyway.”

“My grounds are warded,” Tony said. “The beach at Serpent Rock isn’t. Ty might come back.”

“All the more reason I should be there,” Steve said. “Since I imagine you’ll be busy casting. I can distract Stone.”

Tony stopped walking. “How do you imagine you’ll do that?”

Anger and frustration flared up in him. Didn’t Tony see that Steve just wanted to help? To take care of him? This was his mess as much as Tony’s. He was the one Stone had been stalking and harassing. He didn’t need Tony doubting him, pointing out all the ways he was clueless in this situation. “I don’t know,” he bit out. “Because you haven’t _told_ me anything.”

Tony inhaled sharply, then continued his way through the grounds, never turning to look Steve in the face. “I’ve never told _anyone_ about the curse.”

Steve clenched his fists. “Funny, then, how Wanda seemed to know everything about it!”

“Wanda is a psychic,” Tony said.

Steve bit out a hollow laugh. “And I don’t even know what that _means_ , in real life, because you haven’t explained anything!”

“It’s not—you don’t want to be part of this.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You’ll regret it.”

“Let me decide that. Isn’t that what you want? For me to decide things for myself?”

“But you’re not,” Tony said, his volume increasing as his tone grew more desperate. “You’re not deciding for yourself, not really.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know what the spell did,” Tony insisted.

“If you’re intentionally acting like an ass, congratulations, I certainly don’t like you very much right now.”

Tony might have flinched. He may have stumbled over a tree root, too—it was so quick Steve couldn’t be sure. But he’d never seen Tony stumble before. “I don’t need to _act_ , this is just me.”

“Tony,” Steve said, still impatient. “I just meant—”

“Is there any chance you’ll drop this?”

“None, and no way you’re going without me. If you try to leave me here I’ll just find a way to follow you.”

“That, I believe,” Tony said under his breath. “What is it you expect to do? Run around the beach and hope that Ty follows you?”

“Well,” Steve said acidly. “I don’t know what a revenant really is, or what they’re physically capable of doing, or anything about them, so maybe you could give me a fucking hint before I say something you’ll decide means I’m disqualified from caring about you.”

Tony made a strangled noise and tripped a little on the path, kicking up wood chips. He stopped again, and this time he turned to look Steve in the eye. His face was utterly blank. “Revenant is just a word, it’s not a technical term. It’s magic, so it’s a mess. It just means he didn’t get his fill of hurting people when he was alive so when he died he just kept going as—that, what you saw.”

Steve hated the empty look on Tony’s face, the way his breathing was so precise, so even. “Is this thaumaturgy, too? A spell to make it look like you don’t care?”

Tony turned back to the path and kept walking toward the mansion. He balled his hands into fists but said nothing.

Steve sighed. “What do you mean, he just kept going? How does that happen?”

“Magic works off of, well, magical thinking. Representativeness heuristics. Like in fairy tales. You pour out a pitcher of water and it becomes a lake, separating you from your enemies. You enchant someone using a lock of their hair because a part of them is the same as all of them. You wish for something hard enough and it comes true.” He made a stiff half-shrug. “Ty wanted to keep hurting people, so he found a way to do it.”

“Did he escape Hell, or what?” Steve asked.

“I don’t know,” Tony said evenly, not turning back. “Just because I can make things happen with thaumaturgy doesn’t mean I understand everything about all thaumaturgy everywhere, any more than having a kiddie chemistry set—or a particle accelerator, for that matter—means you understand the chemical makeup of the entire universe and the nature of the Big Bang.”

“So there might not even be an afterlife?”

“It doesn’t really have an impact on spellcasting, so no, I don’t know.”

“So you admit there are things you don’t know.”

“Yes, there’s plenty I don’t know about the universe,” Tony snapped.

“How did he die?”

“He drowned,” Tony said after a moment.

Steve frowned. “I thought you were both in your apartment when it happened. The report Natasha read, it said you’d been—arguing. Before it happened.”

“That’s right.”

“So it was the curse.”

“No. I wish it was. We were fighting, he was yelling at me, and I thought he was going to—to do something. To hurt me. So I lost control, and next thing I knew Ty was on the floor in the middle of my Manhattan penthouse with his lungs full of seawater. I killed him. That’s the guy you think you’re in love with, Steve. A guy who lies and keeps secrets and manipulated you and murdered the last guy he slept with.”

“Why do you keep trying to make me hate you?”

“Because you _should_ , and the fact that you don’t seem to care about any of that is just proof that the spell is affecting you.”

“You think I’m not angry at you? What conversation have you been a part of for the last five minutes?” Steve wanted to grab Tony by the shoulders, spin him around and make him _look_ at him.

“You shouldn’t even want to be anywhere near me.”

“Sure, if you’d been honest with me from the start maybe we could have figured something out sooner, or I could’ve convinced you this is real. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. I can be angry and still care. And Christ, it doesn’t mean you’re a murderer.”

“The guy drowned on dry land.”

“So did every other man who was hit by the curse.”

“I think you’ll find that the rest of them drowned while out on a lake or an ocean, the way most drowning victims do.”

“You know what I meant,” Steve sighed. “It wasn’t your fault, Tony. If you did anything, you were just acting in self-defense.”

“You don’t even know what happened. Maybe he wasn’t going to do anything.”

“I don’t need to know the details,” Steve insisted. “I trust you. If you thought he was going to hurt you, you were probably right. You were protecting yourself the best way you knew how.”

Tony inhaled sharply. They’d reached the French doors that opened into the kitchen, and he stopped in front of them. Steve could see snatches of his face reflected in the glass. “You really shouldn’t.”

“Well, it’s not your decision.” Steve clenched his jaw. “Look, if you want, it doesn’t have to have anything to do with how I feel about you. It’s in my best interest if you cast this spell Loki wants without being interrupted by Tiberius, right? So let me help you. Tell me how to stop a revenant.”

Tony closed his eyes. “Fine.”

 

_________

 

Tony sat on a low rock, his heeled black boots nestled into the sand a couple inches. His position marked the center of a series of shapes laid out on the beach: a hexagon lined in kelp; a pair of triangles comprised of empty mussel shells; a star drawn out of twigs of driftwood; a circle of salt.

It was nearly one in the morning now, almost time to begin the spell. The moon would reach its zenith soon, and then high tide would come just a little over two hours later. That was Tony’s window for working the transformation.

They’d driven one of Tony’s cars to Serpent Rock that afternoon. For a few hours, it was almost like they were just—out together. Spending time at a beautiful beach,collecting twigs, smoothing out the sand, and watching the sun as it set over the waves.

The more deserted the beach grew, the more quiet Tony became, and the more Steve remembered what they were doing there.

Now Tony bent over his tablet, swiping through arcane diagrams and casting notes. A dim, cyan-tinted hologram floated above the screen, showing a hexagon, triangles, a star, and a circle rotating in three dimensions.

“It’s going to work,” Steve said.

“Of course it is,” Tony muttered, but he kept chewing on his lip, and his eyes were locked on the hologram.

“Are you ready for the candles?”

“We don’t need them,” Tony said. “It’s overkill. No need to bother—”

“Earlier you said it would help to have an element of fire to root the transformation,” Steve reminded him.

“I did say that, didn’t I.”

“Can it hurt to have the candles?”

Tony looked at him now. “Yeah, they’ll make me feel like a drama queen.”

A laugh jolted out of Steve before he knew what was happening. Tony’s face remained serious; if anything, he looked affronted by Steve’s reaction. God, Steve wanted to kiss him. “I don’t think the candles are what will take your thaumaturgic spell over the edge.”

“Also,” Tony said firmly, “the paraffin will interact with the quartz in the sand and—”

“That’s why you told me to pack beeswax candles,” Steve interrupted, pulling a pillar out of one of the duffels of supplies they’d brought.

Tony rolled his eyes. “Fine, if you’re so excited about the candles.” He was smiling now—just a little, but it was something.

“I know I only learned about thaumaturgy this morning,” Steve said as he began lighting candles and then setting them in the sand next to Tony’s feet, “but I get the idea you’re very good at it.”

Tony snorted softly.

Steve lifted his head up from focusing the candles to look at him. The lighter clicked and stuttered in his hand. “Am I wrong?”

Tony tilted his head and peered at Steve for a moment. Then he smiled, his eyes sparkling with the reflection of waves and candlelight, the sight of it knocking Steve’s very breath away. He lifted his hands into parallel arcs, his fingers forming a series of mirrored sets of precise gestures, one after another. As his wrists tilted, the lit candles lifted straight up from the ground. They moved as if on invisible risers, staying perfectly level, the speed consistent the whole way up, with no jostling or tremors, before they stopped for a moment, hovering in a circle around Tony. Then they began orbiting him, making a slow circle around where he sat.

“Show-off,” Steve said, feeling warm and fond and a little desperate.

“You don’t even know if that was hard to do,” Tony teased.

Soon there were thirty-six candles hovering around Tony and the pattern of shapes on the sand, and the moon was high in the sky. The time on Steve's phone confirmed it was at its peak. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll let you do your thing.”

Tony nodded. “Stay in the circle. Undead can’t cross salt.”

Steve smiled. He’d only said as much half-a-dozen times already. “You got it.” He’d taken in everything Tony had explained to him about revenants, as well as all the extra information about ghosts and spirits, everything Tony’d mentioned just in case he was wrong about something or it ended up mattering. He had the _lunula_ , still, and a knife carved out of a solid piece of cloudy pink quartz.

Tony’s hands started moving, drawing lines and sigils in the air, his fingers joining and twining and forming intricate shapes and patterns, like he was plucking the strings of an invisible instrument and weaving them together all at once, forming a knotted, golden song. Steve watched, entranced by the sure movements of his hands. Maybe Stone wouldn’t come at all, and Steve could just stand here and watch Tony work. He’d always loved doing that, seeing Tony surrounded by his lights, holograms, and tools.

The candle flames began to pulse. At first, Steve thought it was the wind or just the regular flickering of candlelight. But it became more pronounced, every candle flickering down to almost nothing for the same instant before bursting back at full force. Steve started, too, to see a pattern in Tony’s movements, to recognize certain gestures. The way he’d tap his forefinger to his wrist and then snap his pinkie over his thumb. How he’d step his thumbnail up the knuckle lines of his ring finger and then form one hand into the shape of a bird. The spiraling symbol he traced in front of him, always in the same spot, precise and level as a mime touching an imaginary pane of glass.

As Steve watched, the lines Tony made began to linger. At first they were pale, imprecise. But soon they grew thicker and brighter. The first time they winked out Steve thought something had gone wrong—the candles stuttered out at the same instant, too—but then the lines and the candles roared back at once. A moment later it happened again, then again, and again, a slow, steady pulse. It was in time with the waves, Steve realized, and then the waves shorted out, too. The sound of them cut out, like a plug had been pulled. All at once they exploded back, the waves, the candles, and the lines.

Each time the flames of the candles and the gleaming sigils winked out, so too did the sounds of the sea—of the wind, of Steve’s own breath, everything. Sound and light were swallowed for an instant before roaring back, filling the void made by their own absence. Light, a beat, then silence and darkness, replaced by light and water and wind once more.

A shape was coalescing out of the glowing lines, now. A swirl of spirals and pentagons encircled each other into something like a nautilus’ shell, a three-dimensional Fibonacci sequence. Triangles, circles, and bursts of straight lines extended from them. Tony’s hands moved and worked, filling out the design. Still sound and light pulsed in and out—light and loud, silent and dark, light and loud, silent and dark.

Among the sound of the waves came another noise, an intrusion. Footsteps, and laughter.

Tony heard it, too. His breathing picked up and his jaw tensed as he refocused on the shapes in front of him. Steve tore himself away from Tony and faced the approaching sound, pulling the quartz knife from his pocket and the _lunula_ pendant from under his shirt. His hand tightened around the handle of the knife. The laughter increased in volume, piercing and wild as it cut through the sound of the waves and the pulsing silence of Tony’s spell.

Stone’s form coalesced out of tiny dots, just like before. His mouth was twisted with his discordant, arhythmic laughter, his skin sallow and too pale, tinged with blue. He moved as if he’d never stopped, like becoming visible hadn’t broken his stride.

“Don’t come any closer,” Steve said.

The laughter broke off, dwindling into hiccuping giggles. “You think you know what’s going on here,” Stone crooned, still smiling, still walking slowly, steadily toward them. “You think you’re what he needs.”

Steve raised the knife. “Just leave us the fuck alone,” he growled. He was some feet outside of the circle and desperately aware of his own vulnerability, facing down a supernatural creature he’d only just learned was real. But he had to keep Stone away from Tony for as long as possible, and if there was a chance to hurt him or banish him before he could get close to him, Steve would take it.

Stone’s smile grew wider. Steve tried to count the teeth it exposed. “Impossible.” His voice was oily, but otherwise, much more ordinary than Steve would have expected. Stone took another step. One moment he was a yard away, but when his foot hit the ground it was inches away from Steve, just on the other side of the line of salt. Cold, damp fingers locked around the wrist holding the knife. Stone’s other hand reached up and grasped the _lunula_. His hand shook, like it hurt him to touch, but he held on. Steve thought he smelled burning flesh. “This isn’t yours,” Stone growled, and tugged the necklace until the clasp broke. He tossed it to the ground, steam rising from his skin where it had touched the metal.

Steve strained against the hold, trying to twist free. He pulled back, retreating into the safety of the circle.

Stone threw back his head and uttered a screeching, rictus sound, too high and sharp for someone so large, out of sync with how anyone should breathe or sound.

Then he stepped across the salt line. The line that no undead could cross.

Steve spiraled his wrist out of Stone’s grasp and lunged his knife arm at the approaching figure. With a sickening, meaty sound, it sank into his side. Steve hadn’t known what he’d been expecting from stabbing a revenant—Tony had only told him that undead were especially susceptible to quartz, that the knife had been enchanted to dispel spirits, and he hadn’t exactly said what that would look like—but it hadn’t been this, the feel of the stone blade meeting the resistance of fabric and flesh, the way Stone leaned in and laughed and laughed and breathed his cold, sour breath onto Steve’s face. The way Tony cried out the moment the knife sank into Stone.

“Tony,” Steve called, pulling the knife free and trying to twist further away and block Stone from Tony at the same time. Tony still sat on the stone, carving his lines and sigils into the air with the movements of his fingers, the candles circling him and pulsing in and out. But he was sitting wrong, his body arced with pain. His breath stuttered and his body shook and there—when the candlelight surged up again, Steve saw blood, dripping from Tony’s side where Stone’s wound should be.

Steve’s distraction cost him. Freezing hands clamped onto Steve’s sides. “Got you,” Stone said. Steve dropped the knife and tried to reel back, to make Stone overextend himself to maintain his hold. He reached for Stone’s arm, hoping to drag it off of him, but before he could even pull away, he was being lifted off the ground.

Then the hands were gone—everything was gone, the land was gone—and he was hurtling through the air. He thought he heard Tony’s voice, and he saw the candles wink out once more, heard the sound of the waves snap into a moment of silence, and then he hit the water and plunged down, down, down.

He didn’t know how far he was from shore. He only knew crushing cold and darkness, the weight and pressure of the water as he sank. He’d failed Tony, he’d—he’d hurt Tony, somehow, by stabbing Stone, and now Tony was alone. What breath was still in Steve’s lungs was being crushed out of him, and there was nothing he could do.

The water turned and tossed him as his limbs tried to churn through the dense crush. His eyes were open, stinging against the salt, but it did him no good in the strangling darkness. He knew which way was up, at least, and flailed his limbs in that direction. But the sea wouldn’t let him go. It pulled him back, grabbed him, held him under. His chest ached. Soon his body would try to take a breath. He’d swallow water, he’d fall forever, he was going to drown, just like—just like—

His body hit something rough and bright. Then he was being lifted, surging up through the water all at once. He burst through the surface, hit the air and gasped for breath, slid and slipped on the surface of whatever was carrying him. It undulated under him, freezing cold and sinuous strength. He blinked water out of his eyes, coughed it out of his lungs, let it stream off his face and soaked clothes, reached out with his limbs and tried to cling on to whatever moving, heaving _thing_ had lifted him out of the water.

It felt like sandpaper, or roof shingles, under his hands, and looked like—like huge gray scales. Muscles rippled under him as he clung to it, straining to see what it was, to see the shore, to catch a glimpse of Stone or Tony or to make sense of a single thing that had happened in the last minute.

He was clinging to the side of a giant sea creature. A serpent, something like a sea snake and an eel and—and a dragon, spiraling and oscillating through the waves. It was, he realized slowly, the Serpent Rock. The transformation spell was complete. It moved in the same undulating arches as the rocks had formed and even had the same girth as the pillars of stone, though much less craggy. If Steve strained his neck, he could see its head, barely flaring out from its thick, corded body.

It headed straight for the shore. In moments it was slithering over the sand, surf foaming around its lead-colored scales. It sidled up just outside the shapes surrounding Tony, and then curled to one side, throwing Steve onto the sand. He fell onto his hands and knees in the lines of the driftwood star and the outline made of mussel shells.

Behind him, the gargantuan creature was slithering away, returning to the water. Ahead of him, Stone stood over Tony, whispering something to him, his face twisted into a leering smile. Tony was hunched over, his face buried in his arms.

Steve got to his feet. He barely felt the cold any more. With a dawning clarity, he understood what was happening.

“Hey,” he snapped.

Stone turned his head slowly, the smile a gash on his sallow face. Tony jerked his head up, staring at Steve with wide, stricken eyes.

“Shut up,” Steve growled. “You’re not Tiberius Stone.”

He wasn’t a revenant or a ghost. He wasn’t undead. That was why he’d broken the circle so effortlessly, when it should have been impossible.

The figure cocked its head, then broke into a sharp, discordant cackle. He shook with it, bending over and clutching his stomach as if Steve had just told the funniest joke in the world. Beside him, Tony looked between the two of them, his shoulders tense.

“You can’t hurt him,” Steve went on. “You can’t even touch him, can you?” The idea had occurred to him when he’d stabbed Stone and it had injured Tony instead. Steve hadn’t had time to examine it fully, before. He still didn’t fully understand it, but he remembered everything Tony had said about magic and the principles it worked off of: affinity, association, wish fulfillment, strength of will. Plus, if Stone could have injured Tony, he would have done it by now.

Stone wheezed. “I don’t need to,” he said between breathless giggles.

“But you can’t,” Steve said, stepping closer, willing his limbs not to shake. He was drenched and freezing, but he had more important things to attend to first.

“Hurting you will be so much more fun,” Stone said. But he didn’t move.

“Steve,” Tony rasped. He seemed frozen to the spot, his eyes still flickering between Steve and Stone. He was holding something clenched in his hands, but Steve couldn’t see what it was.

“It’s okay, Tony,” Steve said. Finally he reached him, took his hand in his own. Tony felt warm under Steve’s cold, wet fingers. He crouched down so he was eye level with him, ignoring Stone entirely. “He’s not a revenant.”

“He’s,” Tony started. “He can—” He cut himself off, his eyes flickering over Steve’s face.

“I know you feel responsible for Stone’s death. I know you think you don’t deserve to be loved, that no one ever could or should love you, that if they did, you’d be killing them and so everyone should hate you for it. I know he said horrible things to you, convinced you of things that aren’t true. I know you think you’ve controlled me and sentenced me to die. You think you’ve hurt me the way he hurt you. You hate yourself for it, for all of that.”

Tony inhaled sharply, tried to tug away from Steve’s hand. His eyes squeezed shut. Behind him, Stone was silent.

“And I can’t fix that for you. I can just be here for you, and show you that I love you, and tell you that you deserve happiness. I wish my loving you could make you be kind to yourself or forgive yourself, but...but all I can do is be with you. And I won’t let any of it hurt me.”

Waves surged and fell against the beach. Cold wind swept over Steve’s sodden clothes, the gooseflesh rising on his exposed skin. Tony’s hand quaked under his own. He could feel Tony’s pulse, fast but steady. Alive, safe.

“Tony,” Steve whispered. “He’s gone.”

Tony opened his eyes. He straightened and turn, blinking at where Stone had been standing. There was no one.

Tony clutched tighter onto Steve’s hand. “He was—it, that thing, that was me. I did that.”

“I know you’d never intentionally do anything to hurt me,” Steve said.

“I’m sorry,” Tony said, finally extricating his hand. He turned his face away to stare at his feet.

“I just told you it was okay,” Steve whispered, knowing it was useless.

“It wasn’t just—it wasn’t only what you said, I think,” Tony said slowly. “The way he—it—went after you. I was thinking about you, I was worried about you, I wanted to see you, that’s why it was following you. It could have hurt you.”

“It didn’t.”

“But I made it, that thing, that was me,” Tony said. He looked miserable. “It went after you because I wanted to go after you.”

“You didn’t know,” Steve said. “You thought it was a revenant, and you tried to protect me.”

“It’ll still come back,” Tony said. He swallowed. “The Tiberius-thing. All of that is still there. All of the feelings that turned into that monster. Everything that made it, it’s still there, so. It’s not really gone for good.”

Steve wasn’t surprised to hear that. “Good thing you turned that rock back into a sea serpent, then.”

“Yeah,” Tony said roughly, scrubbing a hand over his face. The broken necklace dangled from his other hand.

“That was amazing, Tony,” Steve said. “And just in time, too,” he added.

Tony shifted, not meeting Steve’s eye. “Thanks.”

“Are you okay? When I stabbed him—”

“The cut disappeared when he did,” Tony said quickly. “When it did,” he amended a moment later. He was still staring at his feet. When he spoke again, it was in a low whisper. “I’m sorry.”

Steve wished he could wrap Tony up in his arms and find a way to convince him that he was cared for. Instead he got to his feet and said, “Let’s talk to Loki and get out of here.”

Tony nodded and stood too. Before Steve could ask what to do next, the wind picked up abruptly, scattering twigs and stray strands of seaweed from their arrangement around the rock where Tony had been seated. Silence descended once more, cutting out the sound of the sea and the wind, and then Loki was standing on the beach, leaning against a twisted staff.

“Well done, thaumaturgist,” he said. “It is good to see my daughter swimming free once more.”

Tony drew himself up. “And our agreement?”

Loki waved a hand—but not imprecisely: it had a specificity to it, a significance beyond the languid grace all of his movements carried. “Instructions are on your electronic device now.”

Tony reached for the tablet, glancing over at Loki warily as he did so. An array of glyphs lit up over it, near Tony’s eye level. The markings were comprised mostly of circles and arcs, with dark dots nestled into their curves. Tony’s eyes flickered over them as if reading. “Foundation makes sense. But—“ his breath caught and he cut off abruptly.

He swiped at the hologram, making it vanish, and turned to Loki, his face furious. “No,” he growled. “What kind of game—”

“No game,” Loki said, his lipless smile widening. “That’s the ritual to lift the curse.”

“Bullshit. You—”

“Read it,” Loki snapped, his smile disappearing. “I have upheld my end of the bargain. I don’t have time to listen to your moralizing. And neither, you’ll find, do you. Moonset fast approaches. I suggest you use the hours until then wisely. Or wait until the next full moon, what do I care.” With that, he vanished.

Tony stared at where he’d been standing, gripping the tablet with both hands.

“Tony,” Steve ventured. “What does it say?”

Tony exhaled and crumpled like his strings had been cut, his shoulders falling lax and eyes fluttering shut. “Let’s get you to the car. I have a dry coat and some blankets in there, and we can blast the heat.”

“I’m okay for now,” Steve insisted. He was cold, but it wasn’t like he was in any danger. “Tell me what it says.”

“It’s. Uh.” He swallowed. “A sex ritual.”

Steve’s mind skittered to a halt. “Those are really a thing?”

“Sort of.” Tony glanced at Steve before quickly averting his eyes. “It’s _magic_ ,” he spat. “God, I hate magic.”

“But it’ll work?”

“Yeah, it probably would,” Tony said sourly. “I’d have to read the whole thing over, but yeah, he can’t really just break a deal like that and give me something that isn’t what we agreed. Well—it’s more complicated than that, but he wouldn’t. And what I read so far does make some sense.”

“Then,” Steve said, “what’s the problem?”

“What’s the problem?” Tony repeated, his eyes wide. “Steve, I’m not—I’m not going to have sex with you!”

So it was— _that_ kind of sex ritual. Steve recovered from his shock and moved straight on to indignation. He put his hands on his hips. “Why not?”

“Steve,” Tony croaked. “You can’t _consent_.”

“Yes, I can,” Steve said, taking a step toward him.

“You only want me because of the spell.”

“I’m in love with you,” Steve insisted, staring straight at Tony’s eyes and daring him to meet his gaze.

“You’re not,” Tony said, looking down at his hands. “Not really.”

“So you’re just going to do nothing?”

Tony shook his head silently.

“Witches in your family have been looking for a way to fix this for generations, and you’ve finally found it.” Steve took another step forward, so he stood just inches away from Tony. The sand shifted under his feet. If he rocked forward, just a little, they’d be pressed against each other. Tony still wasn’t looking at him.

Steve took a deep breath. “Even if you really were taking advantage of me, it’s—I mean. The curse can still kill me, right?”

“Yes,” Tony said, so quietly the sound was nearly blown away by the wind.

“So it’s to save my life.”

Tony lifted his head. His gaze settled somewhere over Steve’s shoulder. “Not really a great argument, there. ‘Fuck or die,’ yeah, that sounds exactly like meaningful consent.”

Steve started to lift his arm, thinking of touching Tony’s face, of pulling him closer, of resting a reassuring hand on his, but dropped it immediately. Tony didn’t feel comfortable with Steve touching him, that much was clear. “After we complete the ritual,” he said, his voice sounding weak and forced to his own ears, “you’ll see that you’re wrong.”

Tony just shook his head.

“We are going to cast it, aren’t we?”

Tony opened his mouth, closed it. Took a half-step back. “Maybe we should wait. Talk about it.”

“It has to be the full moon, right?”

Tony nodded.

“I don’t want to wait. Let’s do it tonight,” Steve said, uncaring of the double entendre in his choice of words.

“I just think we should discuss it more,” Tony said levelly. “Whether you can admit the spell is affecting you or not, there’s a lot to talk about. The _lunula_ wards you from the curse, you’ll be safe from that for a while yet.”

“And I’ll just, what, chase off Tiberius Stone constantly for the next month? No.”

Tony sighed. “Let me at least read over the whole thing before we decide.”

“Fine.”

“And take off that wet jacket and wear this,” Tony added, shedding his coat and handing it to Steve.

Steve bit his cheek to keep from smiling. “Okay,” he said, taking it.

Tony sat down on the rock again, the tablet balanced on his knees. The holographic script winked softly as he read it, like candlelight. Beyond him, the sky was a grizzled slate blue, with the moon hanging heavy and pendulous like a ripe fruit about to fall from a bough. The horizon looked bare and strange without the familiar shape of the Serpent Rock arcing across it. Steve wondered what the newspapers would say had happened to make it vanish overnight.

“I hate magic,” Tony muttered a few minutes later.

“What is it?”

Tony ran a hand through his hair. With the other, he flicked something on the tablet, making the hologram go dark once more. “You think _I’m_ dramatic, this calls for having sex on a bed on a beach during the full moon.”

“Oh,” Steve said softly. He hugged Tony’s jacket, still warm from being around him, over his cold, wet clothes.

“Oh?” Tony repeated, quirking one eyebrow.

“I’ve been having these dreams where that happens.”

Tony blanched. “What?”

“I’ve been dreaming about having sex on a bed by the ocean. I thought they were just sex dreams, but—”

“For how long?”

Steve contemplated that. “At least a year, I think? They feel really, I don’t know, familiar, even when I first started remembering them.”

“Fuck.” Tony got to his feet, turning away from Steve entirely.

“What? What does that mean?”

“I don’t know, but it can’t be good,” Tony replied, bending over to pack up their supplies. The candles had, at some point, fallen to the ground. Probably when Steve had been thrown into the ocean, since they’d been lit and hovering evenly before then.

Steve came to crouch beside him, helping to refill the bags with candles and disperse their arrangement of seaweed, twigs, and seashells. “You think I had those dreams because of your spell.”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “I do. But you’re going to insist on doing this anyway.”

It wasn’t a question. Steve answered anyway. “Yes.”

Tony nodded. “Okay. My beach is the best place. It’s, um, private, and it has the wards already, and I can cast something to move my bed down there.”

“Okay,” Steve said softly. “Thank you. I know you don’t want to do this.”

Tony’s eyes landed on his, blazing with something fierce that Steve couldn’t name. “I do,” he whispered. “That’s part of the problem.”

 

_________

 

They walked down the stairs to Tony’s beach in silence. Steve had taken the wheel for the drive back to the mansion so that Tony could study the ritual and start preparing on the way. When their feet hit the sand at the foot of the cliff, Tony’s huge bed was already there. The four-poster gleamed in the moonlight. Surf lapped at the legs. Tony was wearing the spare coat from the car now, another fashionable black wool affair, making his silhouette look broader and darker as they moved across the beach.

Steve’s feet sank into the sand with each step of his approach. His shoes were already heavy with sand and bits of beach from Serpent Rock. The wind wasn’t particularly strong, but it cut through his damp clothes like a shard of ice.

He realized belatedly that Tony wasn’t walking beside him. Steve turned to see Tony standing, his arms crossed in front of him, clutching at his elbows.

“Tony,” Steve said softy. “It’s okay.”

Tony’s eyes locked with his, making Steve’s stomach perform a series of acrobatic feats. Tony drew in a breath, opened his mouth, then closed it and turned away, hugging his arms tighter across his chest. “Let’s, uh. Leave our clothes here, so they don’t get wet.”

Steve walked back to where Tony was standing, slowly, like Tony might spook. He didn’t turn back to look at Steve as he approached. Tony had already toed off his shoes and socks, and now stood shifting his weight from one side to another, damp sand and small pebbles clinging to his feet and ankles. “Let me,” Steve said, reaching for the collar of Tony’s thick wool coat.

Tony stiffened at Steve’s proximity, but he angled his face back towards Steve, his eyes shut. Steve pushed the coat off his shoulders, down his arms, and set it carefully on the sand. He could hear Tony’s heavy, harsh breaths, mingling with the waves churning and plunging onto the beach. Steve reached for Tony’s voluminous, draped scarf, unwinding the soft, dark fabric from around his neck. Tony’s bare throat prickled with stubble. Steve itched to touch it.

“Hey,” Steve breathed. His hands fell heavy at his sides, swinging uselessly. “We’re doing this, alright. I know it’s not—how it should be. But I’m going to enjoy it. Do you think you can, too?”

“I want to,” Tony said softly, not opening his eyes.

“Okay,” Steve said. His hands clenched into fists and then fell open again. He reached up to Tony’s face, still hesitating. “Can I touch you?”

Tony nodded, his eyes squeezed even tighter shut. Steve rested a hand on Tony’s neck. His skin was warm from where the scarf had been moments earlier, while Steve’s were chilled from the night air. Tony twitched a little at the touch, but Steve didn’t think it was from the cold.

“Can I kiss you?” Steve asked.

Tony opened his eyes at that, smiling ruefully. “I should be the one asking you.”

“You can do anything you want to me,” Steve said, leaning into Tony’s gaze.

In the dim light, Tony’s eyes were nearly as ink-black as the ocean beyond. Something flickered in them when Steve said that, and Steve braced himself for another argument, for Tony to draw away—but instead Tony leaned in and brought their mouths together. His kiss swallowed Steve’s breath for a moment. Then he recovered himself and dove into it, the velvet-soft wetness of it, the taste of Tony and the brine of the ocean.

Tony seemed to spill himself into Steve’s mouth, letting free whatever he’d been holding back, everything he’d left unsaid and untouched. His hands found Steve’s coat, shucked it off of him, slipped under his shirt and climbed, liquid smooth, up the skin of his torso. A shiver shot up Steve’s spine that had only a little to do with the chill of Tony’s fingers. His touch felt like water, clear and bright and icy. His mouth, though—his mouth. It was warm, sharp, wicked, and Steve needed it like he need air or water or breath. He staggered to catch up, to take Tony in and fill himself up with the press of tongue and teeth.

As he pulled away to gasp for breath, Tony caught his bottom lip between his teeth, tugging on it as they parted. Tony’s hands were on the hem of Steve’s shirt, now, and Steve hurried to help him, their arms bumping and tangling with the tee as they pulled it off of him. He tossed it to the ground and reached for Tony’s, which they removed with a bit more grace.

“I wish I could see you,” Steve said, gliding a hand down Tony’s arm. The hairs were standing on end. Steve was cold too, but not where he was touching Tony. Nor where the repaired _lunula_ hung around his neck.

In response, Tony undid his belt and fly and shucked his pants in a single, efficient motion. He was pressed against Steve again so fast Steve barely had time to appreciate so much as a moonlit glimpse of his nakedness, his arms around Steve’s neck, his mouth opening around Steve’s own. Steve clutched back, letting his hands feel what his eyes couldn’t see. He skimmed down the sides of Tony’s torso, followed the V of muscles at his hips to his groin. Tony shivered and gasped into his mouth. Then he was diving deeper, the force of him making Steve take a step back. Tony followed, crowding into him.

Steve remembered the last time he’d had Tony like this. He thought he’d known what was going on, or had a pretty good idea, anyway. But Tony had—he must have thought that Steve didn’t really care for him, that he could never fall for him, or he wouldn’t have risked staying in his life at all. Whatever Tony thought of himself, he was terrified of hurting anyone, with his thaumaturgy or his power or his family’s curse. He’d stayed that night at Steve’s—why?

Maybe it didn’t matter. He was here, now, licking at Steve’s tongue, his beard grazing Steve’s cheeks. And Steve knew why this was happening. To end the curse, and Tony’s spell—whatever there was of it to end—to rid the world of the thing that had manifested as Tiberius Stone. Tony had said he wanted this, but he’d also made it clear that he didn’t, at the same time. He didn’t want it to be this way.

Well, Steve didn’t either.

As if sensing Steve’s distraction, Tony made the kiss dirtier, more insistent, and let his hands fall to the waist of Steve’s jeans. Steve awkwardly tugged at the heel of one shoe with the toes of the other, trying to balance and not pull too far away from Tony’s body, to break the seal made by the press of their mouths. He ended up stumbling a little as he pulled off one shoe and Tony shoved his pants down, but Tony held him, tugged him closer by a belt loop. Then Steve’s pants were being dragged off of him, taking his socks and other shoe with them as he staggered back. His freed erection bobbed, insistent and urgent.

Tony let the kiss break this time. His eyes were wide and dilated, the round moon reflected in the round night of pupils. He took Steve by one wrist and walked them toward the bed.

The tide was going out, but the beach was flat here, and each wave that swelled in flowed yards and yards across the smooth, level sand. The water passed the legs of the bed and surged over their feet, icy cold. In the darkness, the ocean seemed at once small, cut short, as well as endless in its darkness. His view of his surroundings was so limited by the lack of light, it was like the only space that was real was in a small radius around himself and Tony.

As they approached the bed, he drank up all he could see of Tony’s body. Golden moonlight slid down his skin, catching his sinews and goosebumps and every lithe movement of his limbs as he walked across the sand, still holding onto Steve’s wrist. He was hard, Steve could see, his erection silhouetted against the dark pewter of the sky.

The bed, when they reached it, seemed even more impossibly large than Steve had remembered it. They stood at one side now, Tony contemplating it, frozen.

Hoping it would encourage Tony to move, too, Steve sank onto the mattress, fell onto his back and let his limbs splay over the sheets. It was hard to tell, but he thought they might be crimson. Pillows came up to meet him, the fabric cool against his skin.

Tony inhaled sharply and climbed after him. Steve could barely feel the mattress shift with his movements. The crashing of the ocean resounded in his ears. Then Tony was there, kneeling between his legs, pulsing with breath, feeling all the warmer against him after the sea air on his bare skin.

Steve had imagined being here so many times. Here, in Tony’s bed. But also here, surrounded by the ocean, in his dreams.

“Tony,” he whispered, so quietly he was sure it would be carried away on the waves.

“It’s okay,” Tony said softly, echoing Steve’s words from earlier. Except, he didn’t sound like he believed it. It sounded like a question.

“Yes,” Steve said, reaching up to touch Tony’s face. He felt the tension drain out of Tony like a stopper had been pulled out. “It’s good.”

“Okay,” Tony said, sounding a little more sure now. He crouched further down and pressed his mouth against the base of Steve’s cock. Steve’s hips stuttered and he groaned out loud. He reached out and ran a hand through Tony’s hair, watching his face, his neck, the shape of his collarbone, as his mouth fell open to lick a stripe up Steve’s length.

Steve knew how this was going to go, roughly. The sketch of it. Tony was going to—to fuck him, to penetrate him. That was part of the spell, for Tony to be on top and the one inside of Steve. They also couldn’t use a condom. Tony had grouchily explained something about seed and spend, the traditional values upheld in old rituals, and the superiority and specificity of thaumaturgy. He said there was probably a way around it, but that if Steve was alright with it, he’d been tested recently and could cast a spell on the _lunula_ for extra protection, and, well—Steve was more than alright with it. He wanted Tony inside him, for his skin and come and cock to all be right there. People called being fucked being “taken,” he knew, by having Tony inside him he’d belong to Tony—and then, with what they’d done at Steve’s apartment, shouldn’t Tony belong to him?—but privately, Steve thought that it would be much the other way around.. Tony would be surrounding him, encompassing him, like his body was swallowing him up, touching all of him at once.

Experiencing it was different from knowing, though. He was breathless, his mouth slack, his eyes glazed. Tony was bobbing over his cock now, his mouth working over the head while his hand slid up and down the shaft in slow, spiraling motions, the muscles of his arms and the lines of this throat working as he moved up and down. Steve was mesmerized, lost. The sound of the sea and his own pumping blood rushed in his ears. Hot saliva slid down his cock, trickling down the tightening skin of his balls. Everything was wetness—the velvety sweep of Tony’s lips, the hot press of his mouth, the very air around them.

Tony pulled off slowly, his lashes lifting until his eyes met Steve’s. Steve had lost the power of speech, could only gape, helpless against the heat and hunger twisting and rising desperate inside him. “You still good?” Tony whispered.

It was all Steve could do to nod dumbly. He wanted to say something, to let Tony know how good he felt, how much needed this, wanted it. Some part of him, as dim as the light on the beach, knew that he should reassure Tony, let him know that this was Steve’s idea too, that he wasn’t hurting him. That he could never hurt him. But he’d run out of words. All he had was his choppy breath and the clutch of his hand in Tony’s hair.

But maybe Tony knew, or could see it in Steve’s face, because his lips were quirking up into what was almost a smile. He straightened up and lifted his hands in front of him, his fingers moving in decisive, complicated gestures. Then one hand was glistening with a wet, viscous slickness.

Steve’s eyebrows shot up and his mouth fell further opened. Ordinarily he’d be saying something, he knew that. But words were distant things and his tongue was thick and heavy and far too wet and slippery to form any.

“Always wanted to show someone else that trick,” Tony said. His eyes flicked to Steve’s, then down to Steve’s groin. Steve opened his legs wide, trying to be obliging. That must have done the trick, because Tony huffed out a tiny laugh and sank back down, bringing his mouth over Steve’s cock and down, down, down the length of it, one oiled hand coming to settle between his cheeks. Steve arched into it, his chest lifting as his lungs filled with air, his hips rolling forward as his head lolled back. Everything was sensation, from the slide of his thighs against the sheets to the supple movements of Tony’s mouth to the cresting and crashing of the waves beyond.

Tony’s fingers circled his rim, gentle and slick. Steve breathed salt air, thick and dense with the sea. The feeling of Tony’s mouth on him, lapping over the head of his cock, of his hand sliding around the shaft, of the silken touch of the sheets against his skin, of the way the bed rocked softly in the sand—it all overlapped, the touches and caresses crossing each other and tangling together into a simultaneous roar of pleasure. There was a blunt pressure at Steve’s hole and then one of Tony’s fingers was breaching him. Steve’s head lolled. He felt boneless, weightless, unbound by the restraints of gravity.

Steve saw only in flashes, his eyes barely fluttering open for a few moments at a time. He caught glimpses of gold, the moon full and swollen. Shards of glinting metal, the posts of the bed, a flash of light in Tony’s eyes. Mostly, what he saw was wetness, an extension of the saliva that flooded his mouth, of the twirling ministrations of Tony’s mouth on his cock, of the endless, omnipresent ocean.

Tony slid up and down, his cheeks hollowing as he sucked and swallowed. His tongue worked in unfathomable patterns, making Steve wonder if he was tracing some thaumaturgical sigil over the head. He wanted to tell Tony how good he felt, how _right_ he felt, but all he could do was pant out rough, jagged breaths. Rightness encompassed the way his thighs trembled, the way Tony swirled his tongue over his cock, the way he worked his finger deftly in and out. What wasn’t right was the growing emptiness and need he felt, even as another finger, slick and gentle and perfect, slid in alongside the first.

The hand on Steve’s cock tightened as Tony worked him open. Steve felt pulled apart, desperate and hungry. He spread his legs still further—or maybe they’d closed around Tony, trying to wrap him up and draw him close—and he bore down on Tony’s hand. It was strong and slippery and so, so sure. Steve came undone like a knot being unraveled.

Tony pulled off of his cock with a wet, obscene sound. He drew himself up, using the vantage of his new position to change the angle of the hand working in and out of Steve’s hole, to find new ways to fill and tease and stroke him. The hand around Steve’s shaft fell to his clenched stomach, skimming over the tautness there, while the one inside of him slid back and forth with exquisite pressure.

In the moments that Steve’s eyes fell open, he caught flashes of Tony’s face, one moment smooth and blissful, the next creased in concern or worry. He realized that he was just lying there, passive and gasping while Tony tended to him, his arms limp at his sides, his legs taut and frozen in place. He couldn’t form words, not now, but he could show Tony how much he wanted this.

He reached one heavy, sluggish arm up to the hand on his abdomen, intertwined his fingers with Tony’s damp, dextrous ones. He tugged at it until Tony drew himself up Steve’s chest, sinking down to rest his weight on one elbow, never ceasing the slippery, blissful movement between Steve’s legs. Steve fumbled his hand up Tony’s arm, across the soft burst of hair on his chest, over his shoulders, feeling the muscles move under his skin.

“You’re glorious,” Tony whispered. He bent down to tweak his teeth over Steve’s nipple, sending a rush down his spine. Tony’s breath felt wondrously warm in comparison to the ocean spray, but when he managed to focus on it, Steve knew he wasn’t nearly as cold as he should be, bare to the elements in the dead of night.

Steve remembered his legs, then, and wrapped them around Tony’s chest, drawing him closer still. “Steve,” Tony stuttered out, sounding as wrecked as Steve felt. That was good, wasn’t it? He wanted Tony to feel what he was feeling. He wanted Tony to share the blissed-out blankness that buzzed between his ears as loud and relentless as the receding of the tide.

Steve pushed at Tony’s back, trying to guide him up to his face. He opened his mouth, trying to express what he craved, but all that came out was a gasping, needy noise. That must have done the trick, though, because Tony surged up and kissed him. He tasted like salt and Steve’s own cock, and the reminder of what Tony had just been doing—of what they were still doing—stole his breath away.

Tony pulled away from Steve’s kiss-bruised mouth, his dark eyes searching Steve’s, leaving him panting out needy, breathless gasps. Steve let his legs and arm fall to the mattress and hoisted himself up on his elbows. Tony went with him, straightening back up, and they moved together until they were both sitting up, Steve crouched on his ankles to stay in Tony’s reach.

He ground down on Tony’s hand. Tony’s hand, god, Tony’s fingers were inside him. Concentrating on the thought made him dizzy. Tony's hands shaped worlds out of light and shadow, whether out of the bright buzz of his holograms or the smudged shadows of his hand puppets. And now his fingers were spreading Steve apart, opening him, baring him, making him rumble with want.

Steve raised a slack, trembling arm up to tug at Tony’s hand. Tony drew it out, gentle and smooth, at the first nudge. “What’s wrong?” Tony asked, breathless.

Steve shook his head. Nothing was wrong, nothing at all. That was exactly the point. He just needed to be filled up, needed Tony to ground him and enter him and complete him.

“Steve,” Tony said. He sounded further away, now, and that wasn’t right, Steve needed him, needed him closer. He opened his eyes to see Tony drawing back.

Steve grabbed Tony’s wrist. His pulse fluttered under Steve’s fingers. “Please,” Steve managed to say. “I want you inside me.”

“Steve,” Tony said again. He still sounded lost. His skin shone, the firm sinuous shape of him outlined in moonlight against the charcoal sky.

Steve wanted to cry out with want. Instead he drew in breath. His lips moved but at first all that came out was a heavy breath. “Please,” he said at last. “Touch me.” His words were slurred and elastic, stretched too long to sound quite right, but they were all he had. “Fuck me.”

Tony’s mouth fell open, a little dumbly, Steve thought, and he almost wanted to giggle. Here, wrapped up in pleasure, his skin still tingling from where Tony’s mouth and hands had just been, the idea that he could ever not want Tony was funny. Ludicrous. How could someone as smart as Tony believe anything like that? Steve would just have to show him how wrong he was.

“Okay,” Tony breathed. “Okay.”

He lifted his hands and made the same sequence of movements. When the slick appeared on one hand, he slid it over his cock. Steve watched as Tony’s perfect, precious hand slathered himself with it. His erection was a dark, full shape against his stomach. Soon that would be inside him.

Steve rose up onto his knees and then fell forward onto his fists. He hooked a leg around so one was on each side of Tony’s body.

“Christ, Steve,” Tony said. “You’re gorgeous.”

Steve canted his hips in response. He felt the mattress shift slightly as Tony leaned in. Then there was a blunt pressure at his entrance, intense and full in a way that Tony’s fingers hadn’t been. It felt strange, an intrusion, but a welcome one, and it was easier than he expect to relax around Tony’s girth, to let breath coat his muscles and the perfect feeling of growing fullness overtake him. Steve’s legs and arms shook, both from strain and from sheer overwhelming need. He gulped for breath as Tony slid forward, tasting Tony’s spit and his own pre-come and the brine of the sea.

Then Tony was inside him, buried in him, and it was everything—it was just everything. Steve clenched and bore down, drawing a slow groan from behind him. Tony’s hips made hitched, aborted motions, like he wanted to move but was holding off. He brought one hand to the small of Steve’s back, and Steve curved against it, raising his shoulders and shoving his ass against Tony’s groin.

“Fuck, fuck,” Tony said. He took a deep breath, then started moving.

Steve could feel the calluses of Tony’s fingers on his hyper-sensitive skin, the dance of fingertips along his back. The touch grounded him, held him in place. He felt so light and right it was almost unreal; without Tony’s hand on him, he might lose himself. Tony was sliding in and out now, desperately slow. Each time he drew back Steve wanted to cry out at the loss—realized that he in fact, was crying out—but then he slid back in, gentle and careful and marvelous. Steve felt every thrust inside him like a wave crashing against the sand, every withdrawal like his body was closing in on itself. And then the slide back in—god, it was perfect. Steve pushed back to meet it, relishing the movement and friction it elicited deep inside of him.

“Tony,” he gasped, or tried to. Words were lost to him once more, and all that came out was a guttural pulse of assonance.

“You feel so good,” Tony said, his words stuttering. The words swept through Steve’s body alongside the rocking of Tony’s hips.

“Mmm,” was all that Steve managed to say.

He felt liquid, like he’d fit into any shape Tony let him fall into. Tony glided in and out of him, smooth and steady as the beat of waves against the shore. Time seemed to melt, transforming into something as fluid and flowing as Steve’s body felt, something for Tony to shape and build as he liked. The feeling of Tony inside him burst across him, blotting out all thought. Words and worries were replaced with a hazy rightness. He felt at once disconnected—like he might float away if not for Tony’s hand on his back, for Tony’s cock inside him—and more connected than ever, like he was feeling, _knowing_ he had a body for the first time.

Steve collapsed forward into the bed, falling from his hands to his elbows. He buried his face in the pillows, let his shoulders and chest fall flush against the mattress. His legs were shaking with a delicious ache as he shoved himself back to meet Tony’s thrusts. The next time he drove inside him it felt even deeper, pressing just the right spot to wipe out all thought, all awareness beyond a rumble of white noise and sparks of sensation and solid fingers keeping him steady.

Tony glided a hand over Steve’s ass, rubbed at it with his rough, clever fingers. He tugged at the flesh there, kneaded it and pinched it until Steve groaned out loud. Tony dug his fingernails in—just a little, they were short and blunt, and it wasn’t pain, exactly, but a jolt of something like it, just enough that Steve could feel it, enough to make his voice go even louder, to make the muscles in his legs and core tense. And oh, that’s why Tony had done it: the tightness it brought on him went all the way down, made him clench down over Tony’s cock with the shock of the sharp scrape of nails.

He heard Tony’s breath hitch and catch. His movements sped up, and Steve sank deeper onto the bed with a groan, taking Tony’s hips with him. He wasn’t holding himself up any more, he was just laying on his stomach, his legs falling wide and limp, his cock hard and grinding into the mattress. The front of Tony’s thighs pressed against the back of Steve’s. Their skin scraped together, rough and damp with sweat.

“Almost there,” Tony whispered, and on their own the words could have been a warning or a suggestion, but it sounded like—like a reassurance, an apology. The pleasant distance and buoyancy of before was replaced with a heavy, leaden feeling as Steve remembered that Tony thought he was doing something wrong, that Steve was wrong, that everything that Steve was and craved was just Tony’s own desire reflected back at him, and he needed to know that it wasn’t true, that Steve was his own person and his want was real and his very own.

He still felt good, filled up. But the ease and languidness of it was gone. He wouldn’t have thought he’d be glad to find his brain kicking back into gear—because it meant he was thinking again, his head filling with words instead of pleasure and sensation and rhythm—but at least now he could formulate something to say. “Can we,” he started turning his face to the side so the bed wasn’t entirely muffling his voice, “can I get on my back. I want. I want to see you.”

Tony slowed, his hands stilling on Steve’s skin. “Yes,” he said, after a moment. His voice was quiet and breathless, but sad, too. “Of course.”

Steve pushed himself back up onto his elbows. Even with the feelings of looseness and lightness receding, his limbs felt slack and clumsy. His muscles sung with a warm, bright ache—enough to slow his movements, but a pleasant, full awareness, like he’d been working out his entire body.

Tony slid out, eliciting a gasp from Steve at the loss, and his hands came to Steve’s thighs, helping him to turn, their limbs tangling. It was awkward, moving like that; his legs felt huge, his whole body unwieldy and dull, like there was a lag time between his brain sending a signal to move and the movement itself. God, no wonder Tony had thought he wasn’t enjoying it, he’d just been lying there, sinking further and further into the bed.

But then he was on his back, and Tony was arranging pillows under his shoulders and behind his head, his choppy breaths warm on Steve’s skin as he leaned over him. He wasn’t meeting Steve’s eye, and Steve wondered how much he’d missed when he’d had his eyes shut, too blissed out to notice that Tony was anything but. “Please,” Steve said, reaching a hand up to cup Tony’s face, “keep going.”

Tony looked at him, then, and maybe a cloud had moved away from the moon or Steve’s eyes had adjusted to the light or the sun was starting to come up, because he could see the blue in them, indigo framing the ink-black circles of his dilated pupils.

“Please,” Steve said again. He reached a leg up and hooked his calf over Tony’s back.

Tony took himself by the base and guided himself back to Steve’s hole. Steve threw his head back and cried out. The feeling of rightness and fullness returned as Tony entered him, hard and silky smooth and deep inside, deeper than anything he’d felt before, hitting him just right and making the edges of his vision white out. Mindlessly he reached out for Tony, found his hand, his knee, and held on.

“Been thinking about this,” Steve husked out. Tony was moving in him again, a rocking motion so perfect and exquisite that he was rapidly floating back into that world of weightlessness and mindlessness.

“Steve,” Tony said. He pulled himself up on his knees, making his cock move deliciously inside of Steve as he shifted, rising and bending over, pushing the leg around his back until it hung over his shoulder, one hand moving to Steve’s other leg to lift and support it, his thrusts never ceasing. His face reached Steve’s and his eyes fell shut as they kissed. He’d let go of Steve’s hand to move, but they found each other again where Tony was holding himself, his elbow pressed into a pillow. Their fingers intertwined. Tony’s lips worked softly, not pressing in too far, just mouthing at Steve, drawing his lips around Steve’s mouth and then pulling them away. Steve kissed back, or tried to, but mostly just filled Tony’s mouth with breathless groans and messy swipes of his tongue. He squeezed Tony’s hand in his as if Tony might let go, while his other found the plush curves of Tony’s rear. God, Tony felt so good, in every way, all over.

The hand on Steve’s thigh fell away and moved to his cock. Steve moaned into Tony’s mouth and felt Tony smile. The feeling of that, of his lips curling like that against Steve’s slack mouth, pushed something over the edge. Steve bucked into Tony’s hand, still deliciously aware of the slick, steady shove of Tony pressing into him, of the grasp of his hand around Tony’s ass. Tony fucked in and out of him, somehow finding that sweet, perfect spot each time. Steve rutted against Tony’s hips, remembered how Tony’s scratching him had made him clench before, and tried to bear down on him from the inside, to match the way the fist on his cock was holding him so strong and right.

Tony was pulling away from his face, but it didn’t matter, because Steve was watching now and Tony’s eyes were soft and dark, and nothing could stop the warmth pooling and building inside of Steve. He followed Tony’s gaze to his cock in Tony’s hand, dark and pulsing. “Close,” Steve whispered. Their faces were still so near, he could feel Tony’s breath on his skin. “Can you, are you still close? Need you to come in me.” Part of him realized, dimly, that that sounded like he meant the spell needed it. He tried again. “Want you to come in me. Please, Tony.”

“Yes,” Tony gasped. He pressed his kiss-sodden lips onto Steve’s cheekbone, his jaw, down his bared throat, the rhythm of his strokes speeding up. The world was nothing but pleasure, Tony’s body and the roar of the ocean, the dark gray sky and the blurred, wet, edge of the horizon. Steve’s legs strained against him, his grip on Tony’s hand and ass growing tighter. Tony’s thrusts felt endlessly deep. Deep and wet and heavy, like sinking into the ocean. The thought felt incongruously wonderful, and Steve dove into it, letting the crushing waves fill his ears, letting the warm, blissful feeling fill him and fill him, just as Tony filled him—until it all spilled over.

Steve cried out, and Tony was doing the same, his thrusts going choppy. A gush of hot fluid puddled on Steve’s chest, Tony pulsed inside him, and Steve shuddered, panting and gasping. Tony’s face was slack and open and beautiful, his eyelashes fluttering as he came.

Steve just breathed, for a moment, taking gulps of damp, salt air. Tony still held himself over Steve, his eyes growing increasingly hard as he regained himself.

“Tony,” Steve said, reaching for Tony’s face. “Tony, Tony.”

“Hey,” Tony whispered. “You okay?”

Steve felt sated and sluggish and _wonderful_. But his thoughts were returning and sharpening. He smiled. “Yes,” he whispered. “Better than. You feel so good.”

“So do you,” Tony said quietly.

Steve held his gaze. “I love you.”

Tony’s head jerked. “What, Steve—”

“It worked.”

Tony stared. He licked his lips, his eyes flickering over Steve’s. “Steve—”

“Of course it worked,” Steve said, as softly as he could. He stroked a finger down Tony’s jaw. “Go ahead and check.”

Tony drew himself up slowly, lowering Steve’s legs down to the bed as he did so. Steve felt his softening cock shift inside him, not entirely unpleasantly.

Tony raised his hands and worked his fingers into one complex arrangement after another. Finally he laced them together, still moving them in deft, precise formations, and held them out for a moment. He blinked. “Steve,” he breathed.

He shook his head a little, then raised his hands and repeated the same series of movements.

“Steve,” he said, surging forward to grab Steve’s face in his hands and cover his mouth with a wet, sloppy kiss. “Steve, Steve, fuck, it worked,” he said over Steve’s lips.

Steve laughed into his mouth and wrapped his arms around him, tugging him close.


	14. Epilogue - The Memorial

Steve awoke in Tony’s bed, warm and sated and with no idea what time it was. Tony was curled up beside him, his breathing even. Steve smiled and brushed a hand through his hair before easing off of the bed to find his phone. Before they’d left the mansion on the previous afternoon, he’d placed it on what was usually the bedside table, but the table was now nowhere near the side of the bed; when Tony transported the bed back to the room, he hadn’t been particularly picky about where on the floor it ended up, and neither of them had cared.

Steve’s bare feet further scuffed up the lines of chalk that covered the hardwood as he headed toward the table. Looking at his phone—which, fortunately, was now free enough of magical and thaumaturgical influence that it was working normally once more—he saw that it was already past noon. He had a missed call from Sam and an email from Natasha. He’d deal with that later.

Getting back up to the mansion in the wee hours of the morning had been something of a blur, exhaustion and delight overwriting the cold and the long slog up the cliff stairs. Before crashing, he’d managed to make it into a pair of Tony’s sweatpants and, for some reason, an Air Force hoodie that was broad enough for Steve’s shoulders. His own clothes were somewhere in Tony’s laundry room, possibly having been run through the washing machine through the power of thaumaturgy.

Tony hadn’t stirred. The curtains over the windows were dark and heavy, blocking out the daylight entirely, covering him in muted shadows. Steve watched him sleep for some moments. He’d fantasized about waking up here with Tony beside him, and here he was. He didn’t now what would happen next, but after the curse and Loki and Stone and the ritual—well, he was sure they could figure it out, together.

Briefly, Steve was torn between staying in the room until Tony woke up—or maybe waking him up himself—and going downstairs to make food. He didn’t want Tony to think he’d left, or even just to deprive him of the joy Steve had felt waking up beside him. But he also owed Tony some French toast, and maybe he could finish making it before Tony woke. One of Tony’s many tablets was on the table beside Steve’s phone, and, figuring that would be the first thing Tony would head toward on waking, Steve sent Tony a quick text telling him where he’d be, and watched the tablet light up with a brief, silent notification when it was received.

Lucky was waiting for him outside the bedroom door, his mouth hanging open so that his tongue slipped out between his teeth, his tail wagging slowly.

“Hey buddy,” Steve said quietly, shutting the door behind him and reaching down to scratch behind Lucky’s ears. Together they walked down the stairs to the kitchen, where a bowl of water had been set out on the tile floor for Lucky’s use.

Steve started the coffee machine, then checked the pantry for bread. It was quick work to mix up a batter, to get the toast frying on a cast iron griddle and a pitcher of syrup warming in a pot of water. He was halfway through when Nereid showed up at the French doors, whining to be let in—it had started raining. Lucky, who had been dozing underfoot, blearily lifted his head to watch Steve go to the door. The damp black cat sauntered in, arching only a little as she considered Lucky. A moment later she wandered off.

While a fresh slice sizzled on the stove, Steve found one of Tony’s many china cabinets—this one had clawed feet and dragon-shaped handles, and it mostly contained gemstones and bowls of pebbles, presumably for thaumaturgical purposes—and located a bamboo tray with a low rim. He had the toast and coffee mostly plated on the tray when he decided it was missing something.

He glanced at the French doors. Water slurred down the glass, filling the air with the tinkling sound of raindrops. It wasn’t raining hard yet, and there was the umbrella stand in the entrance hall. He wasn’t sure where his shoes had ended up and wasn’t in the mood to locate socks either, so he grabbed an umbrella and headed into the gardens in his bare feet.

Steve returned some minutes later carrying a stainless steel bowl of pears, figs, and apples, dark, damp soil clinging to his feet, his hands and sleeves damp with rain, to find Tony standing in the kitchen, staring at the tray of food and coffee like it held the secrets to the universe.

He started when Steve stepped through the door, shaking out his umbrella. “Steve,” he said.

“Hey.” Steve grinned, set down the bowl, and closed the gap between them to take Tony’s face in his hands and find his lips with his own. Tony melted under him, grabbing onto Steve’s arms and leaning up into the kiss. His lips were warm and soft and pliant. Steve kissed rainwater into his mouth.

Tony smiled sheepishly when they broke apart. “I got your text, and then I came down here and you weren’t here…” he trailed off.

“And you thought maybe the spell took a while to kick in, I’d realized the error of my ways, and run off in your pajamas,” Steve finished for him.

“Kind of,” Tony said, looking away.

“Well, that didn’t happen. Now let me feed you.” He carded a hand through Tony’s hair, flashing him a smile, before he turned back to the tray and the bowl of fruit.

Tony settled onto a stool. Steve brought him his coffee, then washed and sliced the fruit and set everything out before joining him at the butcher block. He watched fondly as Tony dipped his pinky into his mug to check the temperature of his coffee before digging into his food.

“I just,” he said after a moment. “I don’t really see how you can trust me. How this can be real.”

“Tony,” Steve said, setting down his fork to look at him.

“I don’t just mean the curse and my spell,” Tony plowed on, “I mean, leaving you on your own, not responding to any of your calls or messages, sending that Ty-thing after you—”

“You didn’t mean to do that,” Steve interrupted.

Tony’s eyes hardened. “The real Ty wasn’t _trying_ to hurt me, either.”

“That’s different, that’s completely—”

“Whatever I intended, it doesn’t matter. You were scared and alone, and it was my fault!”

Steve reached across the table for Tony’s hand. “I’m not saying I wasn’t upset, or that I’ve forgotten any of that. Or that it doesn’t matter. I wish you had talked to me, of course I do,” he said softly.

“I’m sorry,” Tony whispered.

Steve shook his head. “But I had a lot of time to think about what I would do if I saw you again. I imagined a lot of reasons you’d disappeared, though none as strange as the truth,” he added wryly. “And I thought about what I would do if your reason made sense, if I’d still want to be with you. And I do.”

“But—”

“I’m not going to change my mind.”

Tony smiled a little, at that, a small, lopsided thing that lit his eyes. “Do you ever?”

“I’m sure there were several notable occasions,” Steve said sternly.

“None spring to mind, huh?”

“I just mean,” Steve went on, shooting Tony a glare that only drew his smile wider, “you don’t need to worry that I’m going to leave, or that I’m not thinking clearly. We have a lot to talk about, but we don’t need to do it all at once. We can take some time to just—enjoy being with each other, without secrets getting in the way. And address things when they come up.”

“That easy, huh?”

“Last night you freed a sea serpent from an enchantment that had turned her into stone, and then you broke a decades-old curse on your family.”

“Bit of a different proposition, though,” Tony pointed out.

Steve shrugged. “It’ll be worth it.”

Tony let out air in a rush. “How can you just—say things like that? How can you know?”

“What, you think you can’t talk to me about all this when I have something to say about it? Tell me what you were thinking at one time or another, or reassure me you aren’t hiding something from me, that you aren’t going to disappear on me again?”

“Of course I can.”

“Then there’s nothing to worry about.”

“You really think it’s that simple.”

“I’m not saying that,” Steve said. “Or that I won’t get mad sometimes, or you won’t get frustrated, or we won’t get tired of talking about it, or anything like that. I’m saying I think we can do it anyway.”

“Okay,” Tony said after a moment.

“Okay,” Steve agreed. “Now eat your toast.”

Tony dutifully took a bite. He chewed thoughtfully. “Is that everything?”

“Is what everything?”

Tony waved his hands in answer, a gesture made somewhat lopsided by the mug of coffee in one hand. “I mean, what else do you think is going to happen, in this ‘addressing things when they come up’ stuff?”

“You’re going to dinner with me and Clint and Natasha.”

Tony frowned. “What?”

“It might take them a few dinners to warm up to you. They’re pissed they never met you and then you, y’know, ghosted me.”

“Is that a pun? Did you just make a thaumaturgical pun?”

“Shut up,” Steve said fondly. “And you’ll meet my friend Sam when he comes up here. You’ll have to give him a lot of reassurance that that injured crow is okay,” he added.

“Sounds okay so far.”

Of course Tony had no problem meeting people who he no doubt thought blamed and distrusted him. He probably figured that was what he deserved. “And you’ll call Pepper and Happy and Rhodey and tell them what’s been going on and stop shutting them out of your life.”

Tony sputtered. “How—”

“I met Pepper. She’s been really worried about you.”

Tony crossed his arms. “Fine. But you’re coming with me when I go see them.”

“Sounds terrible,” Steve deadpanned.

Tony stuck out his tongue.

They finished their food making plans to take Lucky down to Tony’s beach and going over the logistics of checking back on Clint’s house. While Steve brought the dishes to the sink, Tony stood, bouncing from the heel to the balls of his feet. “We’re not doing any of those things today, are we?” he asked.

“What, talking about things and spending time with my friends?” Tony nodded. “I had dinner plans with Natasha for tomorrow, and I should text Sam sometime soon, but that’s it.”

Tony stepped closer, his expression growing heated and dark. “Then,” he said, reaching out for Steve’s hands, “can I take you back upstairs?”

“Yes,” Steve said breathlessly. “Please.”

 

_________

 

A fire roared in the cabin’s wood-burning stove. Freshly-caught trout were gutted and cleaned—entirely sans human teeth—and ready to be tossed into a pan once the asparagus and potatoes were done roasting in the oven. Tony had caught more fish than anyone, claiming beginner’s luck. Steve was pretty sure it was thaumaturgy.

Steve leaned into Tony’s space, relishing the closeness. Beside them on the couch, Natasha raised her beer bottle in a toast. “To Bucky and Peggy.”

Bottles and glasses clinked among repeated murmurs of _Bucky and Peggy_. Before she took a sip, Natasha elbowed Steve in the ribs, tipped her bottle against his and said, “To our dead lovers.”

Tony probably hadn’t been meant to overhear, but his glass of juice found Natasha’s bottle all the same as he smiled and said, “I’ll drink to that.”

“Tony,” Steve chided, but his heart wasn’t in it. Tony just grinned at him, his face bright and relaxed, as he downed his drink in one go. They hadn’t seen the thing that had manifested as Tiberius Stone since that night at Serpent Rock, and that was certainly cause for celebration.

When they’d first started these weekends to commemorate the anniversary of the flood, they had felt to Steve like a way of marking time. He’d made it again, survived another year without Peggy and Bucky. He still missed them, but the ache wasn’t so prominent any more.

“Steve,” Tony said, mimicking Steve’s tone of voice.

“You two are gross,” Clint complained, making a source face.

“That’s funny, Clint,” Maria, Natasha’s date, said slowly. She made an exaggerated frown. “If that’s how you feel, I guess that wasn’t you and Bobbi I saw French-kissing by the lake this afternoon? Not even bothering to go behind a tree or up the hill or—”

“My fault,” Bobbi said, not sounding sorry at all. “Can’t keep my hands off this guy.”

“Aw, babe,” Clint said, bending over to kiss her.

Natasha and Steve booed. Maria hissed. “Yeah!” Tony whooped. “Show us how it’s done, Bobbi.”

When the kissing and catcalling subsided, Clint got up to start cooking the fish and making the final touches to the cucumber salad. Bobbi came with him. It wasn’t long before Natasha got up, saying she wanted another beer, and Maria followed her, leaving Steve and Tony alone in the living room.

“Hey blue eye,” Tony said, setting down his glass and scooting further into Steve’s space.

“Hey,” Steve said, taking Tony’s hand in his own, feeling his cool skin and the way his hand fit just right in Steve’s. “You’re sure it doesn’t make me look, I dunno, asymmetrical or something?”

“I love it,” Tony said, his matching pair of sea-blue eyes lighting up. Steve had stopped ordering the tinted contact lenses in the last month, and wasn’t used to it yet, no matter how many times Tony expressed his appreciation. “But it’s your face, if you don’t like it—”

“No,” Steve said quickly, squeezing Tony’s hand. “I like it. But it doesn’t—it doesn’t remind you? Of the spell?”

“It reminds me that I somehow found the man of my dreams,” Tony said. “Fifteen-year-old me thought heterochromia was the height of edginess.”

“And twenty-eight-year-old you?” Steve asked. He already knew the answer; he just liked to hear Tony say it.

“It’s part of you. So I love it. Also,” Tony leaned his forehead against Steve’s, filling the scant space between them with their mingled breath, “I think it’s very striking.”

A yell from the kitchen called them to dinner. They helped bring food and place settings out to the deck. Soon everyone was settled around the table, the smell of rosemary and redwood bark filling the air. They dug into the food and the quiet of eating descended, filled only by the occasional complimentary murmur.

“Steve, Clint tells me you and Tony have an epic magical destiny,” Bobbi said, having already cleared most of her plate. She speared a chunk of potato on her fork and gestured with it, going on to say, “Don’t look at me like that. I was in the Scarlet Circus, I’m not a Muggle. Well, I am, but the Statute of Secrecy has nothing on basic observational skills.”

“There’s no Statute of Secrecy,” Tony said, his eyes twinkling.

“Well, duh.” Bobbi rolled her eyes and popped the potato into her mouth. “Which means there’s no reason you can’t tell me the truth.”

“Natasha told me you two are the real reason the arches at Serpent Rock disappeared,” Maria said sourly, like Natasha had been trying to pull one over on her.

“There may have been some magic and thaumaturgy involved in us getting together,” Steve conceded. “But it was mainly because of genealogy.”

Maria gave Natasha a triumphant look. “I knew it had to be something boring.” She turned back to Steve and Tony. “I bet thaumaturgy is really boring, too.”

“It can be,” Steve said, thinking of Tony’s spells that listed out ingredients down to the microgram, with instructions about what time of day and what days of the month and what moon phase plants could be harvested, what material the stirring rod could be made out of and the precise length it had to be, the thirty-page explanations of the theory behind the hand motions used to cast. “Great for getting good parking in the city, though.”

“Philistine,” Tony scolded, though he had a fond look on his face and his foot was tangling with Steve’s under the table. “Don’t listen to Steve, he’s unromantic. He fought the malevolent manifestation of my dead, abusive ex for me. How’s that for epic?”

“That was nothing. Tony turned the arches at Serpent Rock into a giant sea monster that saved me from drowning.”

“You rescued me from drowning first,” Tony pointed out.

“Tony broke a hundreds-year-old curse on his family to be with me,” Steve countered.

“Is it a competition?” Natasha observed mildly.

“No,” Steve said, at the same time Tony said, “Yes.” Steve kicked him on the ankle.

“Hey,” Clint said, staring at a chunk of trout on the end of his fork. “While we’re on the subject of magic shit. What happened with those teeth?”

The table erupted in groans. Bobbi flicked him on the cheek. “Ew! You said you wouldn’t bring that up any time we were eating fish, cooking fish, going fishing, or contemplating any of the above.”

“Aw, Bobbi, no,” Clint said, making puppy eyes at her. “I just like a good mystery.”

“Apparently the Cuarzo County Sheriff’s department doesn’t,” Natasha said with a small smirk. “They shelved the whole thing. Just another one of those things.”

“Back to the less gross topic. I don’t really see what this has to do with genealogy,” Maria said, punctuating her statement with a sip of white wine.

“Tony’s grandmother was in love with Peggy’s grandmother,” Steve said. “I started hanging out with Tony to do research on Peggy’s family.”

“What happened with your genealogy thing, anyway?” Natasha asked.

“He made an illustrated family tree,” Tony said proudly. “It’s gorgeous.”

“What! I never saw that,” Clint whined.

“I just sent prints of it to Peggy’s family,” Steve said, ducking his head. “I have it on my phone, if you want to look at it.”

“We’ll have show and tell after dessert,” Natasha said.

“So the grandmother of your lost love—who drowned—had a thing with Tony’s. Then you both saved each other from drowning,” Bobbi said flatly. “Yeah, that sounds one hundred percent completely like an epic magical destiny.”

“Nah, not entirely,” Tony said, shaking his head. He still looked at ease—he felt relaxed, too, from the scant inches away Steve was sitting—and although they’d discussed it many times, Steve still felt a surge of pride at how much more confident Tony was in Steve’s affections than he had been just months previous. “There’s some magic tangled up in it, sure, but that’s true of everything in my life. We’re still just a couple of people deciding and figuring out how to be together, like anyone else.”

**Author's Note:**

>  **Warnings** : One character almost drowns, another previously almost drowned and then fell into a coma before recovering, and other characters died from drowning prior to the main story. There is a major plotline wherein a character repeatedly thinks they are being followed and is essentially supernaturally stalked. There is discussion of (but no detailed descriptions of) the deaths of characters who died prior to the main story, by various means, including a very brief mention of a suicide by hanging. Discussion of (but no detailed descriptions of): consent issues (discussion only; all sex in the story is consensual); homophobia/biphobia; emotional abuse; child abuse; medical stuff; and alcoholism, alcohol dependency, and recovery from same. The emotional abuse discussed is between romantic partners and while it doesn't take up a huge number of words of this fic, is a prominent aspect of the plot (it's Tony/Ty, as usual!). An animal is harmed off-page and then gets medical treatment. Some characters (all adults) drink alcohol, smoke marijuana, catch fish and gut them, and eat other meat. Feel free to message me on tumblr if you have any questions about any of the warnings. 
> 
> Find me [on Tumblr](http://dirigibleplumbing.tumblr.com/). This fic [has its own Tumblr post here](https://dirigibleplumbing.tumblr.com/post/180003703717/the-moon-and-the-sea-dirigibleplumbing-the).


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